#david tennat

[bertoyana]

I have everything I've ever wanted.

— METAMORPHOSES.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Promo photo for David's upcoming show Rivals :). Ngk.

[aloyxwrites]

In all lifetimes, in every possibility. Us, forever

new art made in photoshop <3

[stars-bean]

[neat-crows]

So I've been re-watching dr who for the first time ever rn, with a friend who's never seen it before, so I'm seeing all these episodes for the first time since I was 13 and picking up on a LOT that I never noticed before, and holy shit the tenth doctor is SO WEIRD to Martha Jones, and nothing exemplifies that more than the sontaran stratagem/the poison sky.... like..... he is SO weird the whole way down.

When they first see each other again their introduction directly mirrors Jack and The Doctor's in Utopia

"Doctor" "martha Jones" laugh and hug

"doctor" "captain Jack" laugh and hug

And then! they have a normal interaction!!! WIN he asks how her family is and how she is, and they're smiling and genuinely seem like friends very happy to see each other!

And then.... donna drops the fiance bomb.

He turns with a look of.... almost anger? disbelief? and asks WHAT MAN?? Then martha explains who he is and the doctor....

he looks? upset? and then like, resigned? AND THEN martha admits that her fiance is kind of similar to the doctor, and then donna asks "Is he skinny?" and his reactions

is to make a face like "yeahh" AND START NODDING????? like he's taken Martha's admission to mean she's with a man that's just like him, and honestly seems a bit smug over it, and then when Martha says no-

he looks so taken off guard and betrayed ??????????? BRO we are less than 5 minutes in..............

He then proceeds to be tetchy with her, and to be fair this is mostly because of her involvement with unit, and his discomfort with how militaristic she's gotten - which I think comes both from anger at himself for how he's changed her, and also discomfort that she's no longer "his" Martha, she's changed, and he doesn't know her as well anymore.

he tells her off, he's snide and judgmental, he won't even look at her until she tells him to, and he's honestly bitchy - Until she explains herself, and tells him off for being so judgmental, i also think his line "oh so it's my fault" is very telling because..... it literally is? like yes, you put her in situations where she had to become harder and more used to violence......... and he KNOWS it. He's doing what he did all through series 3, which is feel guilty or bad and then take it out on Martha (that's for another post though) until she stands up for herself (get his ass!!) and then when she's finished she looks at him

determined, but eyes darting back and forth waiting for his reaction, on some small level hoping for his approval

and only THEN does he start to smile, and he tells her "that sounds more like Martha Jones." she's back to feeling like she's still his (to him, Martha is acting incredibly normal and platonic). The doctor has always had a weird possessiveness with Martha, going all the way back to their first episode where he hand picked her, and in this second of her looking for his approval, he feels that again, and he IMMEDIATELY started flirting again - please go watch the scene it boggles my mind how fast he switches.

I also want to be clear, Martha isn't flirting back, she's acting extremely normally. She's clearly taken the time away from him to get over, not only romantic feelings, but any anger as well. She seems to have come to terms with how she feels with everything that happened, and she loves and cares about him, but she's not naive to his faults - I also don't think she even picks up on him being weird to her in this scene. She's no longer in tune with his every mood swing, she's not here to fix him, or cater to his needs, and so she no longer notices these small moments from him.

AND THEN.... the clone.

He never flirts with the clone. The ONLY time, is the very first time they interact, before he's realized something is wrong.

he calls her over to come with him, and his face is honestly way too close to hers. bro is a menace. but then, maybe 2 minutes later, he immediately clocks that this is not Martha.

he realizes there has to be a spy and only has to consider for half a second before he turns and asks about her family, he's already realized she's acting a little off, and the second she answers he's 100% certain.

and he gets MAD. he tells her Donna went home because she's not like her, she's not "a soldier" clearly a shot at the sontarans, but also another subtle test, the real Martha wouldn't let that slide, and he wouldn't say that to the real Martha. He continues saying Avanti, instead of Allonse-y, which is interesting, because he already knows. He's not doing this to confirm his suspicions, he's doing this as retaliation. To confirm to himself he knows Martha better than this fake, he's toying with her. BUT. He doesn't go to save Martha.

The next episode, the doctor's daughter, he refuses to accept the label of soldier, but Jenny rightfully points out that he strategizes like one And this is one such moment. He knows Martha is a clone, he's mad and upset, he could go save her right away, but he doesn't. He doesn't because it serves him best to allow her to keep shutting down the nuclear launch.

It reminds me a lot of when Cassandra possessed Rose in New Earth, he played a long for a little bit, but that was just to figure out what was happening. He IMMEDIATELY tried to fix it, I just wonder if it was any other companion if he would have done this. If it was Donna would he have left her for so long? even if it was strategic? it's this weird conflict the doctor has now that he's very very protective and a bit possessive, but he also treats her like an equal on the battlefield, and it's a weird... trust? he has in her to take care of herself.

I kind of don't want to call it trust because that sounds too positive, but I don't know another way to phrase it, but it's a forced independence and self sufficiency.

but then, he finally goes to save her

He goes and cradles her face gently, and NOTABLY says "good, still alive" MEANING HE DIDN'T KNOW??? and still left her for that long...

but he holds her gently, and fully ignores the clone. He has his back to her, and then proceeds to taunt her. He tells her he clocked her right away because of the pupil size, thin hair, and he says she smells. but we know this isn't true.

Sure maybe those physical traits are true, but that's not how he figured it out, we saw how he did it, he clocked on because he knows Martha so well, but he can't admit that. He can't admit that he knows her just as much as she knows him, just like he couldn't tell Rose he loved her.

He is so deeply angry at this clone, he makes fun of her, he yells at her, he looks at her likes she's nothing

This is his face when he kills her. He doesn't talk to her, or even TRY to save her. And we know she is alive, she has memories, and her own thoughts and feelings, and the doctor kills her while gloating because of his immense anger for hurting Martha. An anger that is also guilt.

he does not speak to her like a person (which directly leads into his treatment of Jenny in the next ep).

Parallel that to how Martha treats her, they talk about their family and she even calls the clone Martha. She really is a doctor in a way ten tried and often failed at.

And then at the end, Donna asks Martha to come with them, and she says no, and that she's happy at home, but she's better for having traveled and come back.

And the doctor looks at her

With an obvious sadness, but also acceptance. He clearly wants her here, with him, but I think he's finally come to accept that that'll never happen, and he needs to let her go.

Edit: I Like their dynamic(mostly) This is not an anti tenmartha post Him being a freak is compelling

[svlover]

I wrote this before David Tennant himself confirmed that Asa and Anthony aren’t Aziraphale and Crowley. But it still sums up what I think they are.

At first, I kept trying to figure out how to explain why the ending with Asa and Anthony bothers me so much, and why I can’t see it in a positive light like some fans do. And I’ve finally figured out how to put it into words.

I tried, I really did. I even started writing a fix-it fanfic… but then I stopped, because the very existence of Asa and Anthony bothers me so much that I have a hard time coming up with anything that could somehow fix who they are and give us back the real Aziraphale and Crowley. Don’t get me wrong, they’re really sweet, and it’s not like I hate them. But no matter how I think about it, they aren’t Aziraphale and Crowley. Even if it were a case of reincarnation, as some fans believe, without even a trace of their memories, they still wouldn’t be them. And even if they really did meet in every universe and got a happy ending everywhere, it still isn’t satisfying, because the real ones didn’t get their happy ending.

But based on what the creators showed us and told us, they aren’t reincarnations either. Because if the original versions were erased and never existed, then how can they possibly be reincarnated?

They’re something else. They’re really just alternative versions.

The creators basically wrote their own Human AU fanfiction.

They did it the same way fans write AU fanfiction. How do we do it? We take the source material - the characters we know - and reimagine them in a different universe. It becomes a "what if" scenario.

What if Crowley were human and a rock singer, and Azi were his fan? What kind of story would they have? What would their backstories be? In what ways would they be the same, and in what ways would they be different? And then we weave it all together into a nice story.

In this case, God actually did that for the creators. She created a new universe and used the same template, because why create something completely new when she can use the original model that worked and that she actually liked? And so she used all the templates of the original characters in a different universe as well. She essentially created a new alternative universe that operates according to different rules, as if the original one had never existed.. which, according to the story, it hadn’t.

That’s what Asa and Anthony are. Different versions of Aziraphale and Crowley. A reimagining of them in a new world.

They share some similar traits, but they have slightly different personalities because this is, after all, an AU set in our universe, so they can’t be exactly the same. And they’re surrounded by similar things; we see various elements and moments that resemble the original universe, but that’s exactly how an AU works.

I get the feeling that the creators were patting themselves on the back for this idea and thought they were doing something awesome for us fans. Because, after all, we love AU fanfics. They probably felt that turning the series into a rom-com at the end would be some kind of tribute to the fanbase.

But just because they are, in a way, them.. their alternative version.. is that really a happy ending?

I think a lot of people still see it as a happy ending because the conclusion makes it seem as though both we and the two of them got everything we wanted. But I’ll try to explain why I think it’s actually a tragedy.

Let’s take a step back and try to ignore the fact that Asa and Anthony looked cute and happy at the end. Instead, try to imagine another favourite series of yours.. any series:

The writers spend months hinting that the main character will get a happy ending, and you’re looking forward to it.

Then you watch the finale, and the hero dies!

Then the story cuts to a parallel universe where another version of your hero.. quite similar, but also different.. and lives a different life. And they show you how this version got the happy ending you always wanted for your original hero.

And the narrator says:

"Your hero may have died, but here’s another version of him who got a happy ending. Isn’t that great? Aren’t you satisfied?"

Would you be?

Or here’s a more specific example.

Who here watched Loki? What if Loki were brutally killed at the end (not that that hasn’t already happened in the MCU 😅), but then they showed us that Alligator Loki survived and got a happy ending?

It’s Loki, just a different version of him. Would that still feel like a happy ending for the main character?

That’s exactly what the creators did. They just packaged it as a cute rom-com scene with adorable David and Michael. But the result is still the same. Only the alternate versions got a happy ending.

The story of the real Aziraphale and Crowley ended in a bookshop at the end of the universe, with them being scattered in the Thanos way 😢

They never managed to resolve the issues that separated them or really talk about them. And they didn’t get their happy ending.

Their universe, and they themselves, were replaced by a new, “better” version and by characters who are essentially blank slates, so they can easily fall in love and get a happy ending without the creators actually having to resolve anything in the original universe.

Unfortunately, no matter how good an AU fanfic is, I can’t really imagine a fan who, after reading it, would genuinely wish for someone to erase the original series and replace it with the AU version.

I’ll never understand how the creative team could have thought this was a satisfying ending.

I feel like screaming: "They killed my favourite characters! B*stards! All of them!"

And I certainly don’t believe this was the only possible ending. They could have made them human and made the universe a better place without having to completely rewrite everything.

I’ve read many variations of that ending, and they all made much more sense to me, because our Azi and Crowley wouldn’t have given up like that at the end and wouldn’t have agreed to erase everything when they were literally given the chance to choose for themselves.

For example, they could have wished for the current universe to continue without a higher power and become human. It would still be bittersweet because they’d only have a few decades left together. But it would make sense. I believe Terry would have been okay with something like that.

But an ending like that would have required a bit more effort. What they actually did was easier.

And it also gave them the opportunity to bring the GO world into our universe, which they probably thought was cool too.

Another twist that I just don’t understand. What’s so amazing about the real world?

I watch and read fiction precisely to escape the real world and enjoy a little magic. Who could possibly like the idea that the whole story is now reduced to a few mortals living ordinary lives in this boring, yet still cruel, world?

That ending isn’t bittersweet. It’s just bitter.

The entire universe, all the characters we’ve grown to love, and a story spanning 6,000 years - all erased as if it never happened. But we got their alternate versions, who are similar to them and living a good life. 😠

If the creators ever confirm that their memories weren’t completely erased and that they’ll eventually get them back, or if they confirm one of the other fan theories and headcanons (I really like the snow globe one), then I’ll probably accept it.

But until that happens (which probably won’t, because I truly believe the writers meant exactly what they showed us) I’ll consider it a tragic ending. Actually, for me, it’s probably the worst ending to a favourite series I’ve ever seen. And right now, I’d honestly prefer no Season 3 at all over what we got. Ending everything at the end of Season 2 would also have been terrible, but at least our real, original Aziraphale and Crowley would still exist.

I made myself cry while writing this essay. But I had to get it off my chest. Thank you for reading this far. I just want to add that if you genuinely liked the ending, that’s perfectly valid, and I’m happy for you. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. I just wanted to share my perspective and explain why I personally can’t bring myself to like this ending.

[starks-kid]

DAVID WHAT DO YOU MEAN "I WAS ME BEFORE WE WERE US"

STAGED YOU WERENT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT TO ME

[ace-lynir]

Finale so fucked it got me over my fear of heights and got me climbing the 8 floor scaffolding I work on like its a playground cause nothing fucking matters anymore