amy pond

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This headcanon post of mine made me wonder again about the relationship between Amy and her aunt, and not for the first time I’m coming to some not-so-great conclusions…

Leaving a seven-year-old alone at night (no babysitter, no-one to check on them, nothing) for seemingly no good reason is…not great parenting, let’s face it. According to the clock on the wall in The Eleventh Hour, Aunt Sharon was absent from about 8:30 pm to about 11:20pm- I dunno what was going on for four hours at night that was more important to her than her niece, but there you go. And the fact that Amy doesn’t seem too bothered about this kinda implies it’s a pretty regular occurence, too. Not great. I know Doctor Who isn’t remotely set in the real world, and the absence of parental authority figures adds to the fairytale feel, but I think in the real world people would be asking Sharon questions before too long. Or I hope so.

There’s that, and then there’s The Big Bang, where we actually meet Aunt Sharon. She doesn’t seem particularly approving of Amelia’s flights of fantasy, and has hired a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist seems perfectly nice and gentle when questioning Amelia about her ‘stars’, but Sharon’s frustrated sigh of “Oh, Amelia!” when Amelia talks about it implies to me that Sharon has no patience at all with what she probably sees as her niece’s mental issues. Her facepalm at the wedding when grown-up Amy makes her “imaginary friend” speech says the exact same thing. That’s not a look of concern, more a look of “oh god not this again.”

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So yeah. I don’t think Aunt Sharon was abusive, not that at all, but based on what we know about her I don’t think she was a very good parent, and it’s not really surprising that Amy (in Series Five, before she gets her parents back) is a bit abrasive and afraid of abandonment. And that she took the Doctor accidentally leaving her behind for so long so badly- she’s used to being let down by adults.

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oncetherewasanovelidea:

merwholockhood:

tenxrosetyler:

I think this is it.

I think this is my favorite post on tumblr.

that’d totally be their reactions!!!

Argh okay NO. I saw something about this post but I hadn’t seen it but I’m just going to explain this as best I can and wait for the arguments to evolve. Okay.

Clara is LITERALLY speaking born time and time again with the sole purpose of saving The Doctor (Oswin Oswald, Clara Oswin Oswald and the remaining echoes). So there’s that.

I also don’t think that any of them would react even sort of like this, not even Rose who would be, in my opinion, the most likely to react poorly.

Every one of these girls saved The Doctor and every one of them could lay claim to being born to save him. On many occassions, they make jokes about how he is useless without them and what would he do without them etc, so none of them would even be surprised that he’d need a woman to save him because he tries hard to be clever but he’s old and sometimes he doesn’t see things the way a younger companion does.

Besides all of that, Martha would just be glad he found someone to travel with. Martha is super underappreciate not only because she is a BAMF but because she is so calm and easy going and she gets that The Doctor needs a companion. Donna a)doesn’t remember him [sorry it hurts me too] and even if she did, she was nothing but nice and happy when she met Rose and Martha and even invited Martha to travel with them. Amy too wouldn’t react like that because 1. she didn’t want him travelling alone and would be glad Clara was out there helping him and 2. her daughter was born to kill The Doctor.

TLDR: Everyone of them was technically born to save The Doctor because they all save him and without them he’d be a million kinds of dead. But Clara particularly was literally born in dozens of lifetimes with the sole purpose of finding and saving his life. These reactions aren’t even really fitting to their characters.

(Thank you.)

Who the hell is looking at Doctor Who and thinking “You know what we really need here? More girl hate!”

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Amy Pond has no characteristics > She doesn’t have a deep, deep fear of abandonment, a fear which leads her to push people away

(Sarcasm mode off, and possible trigger warning for child abuse/neglect)

Amy expects people to leave her, because that’s all they’ve ever done. (Her parents, remember?) So she says to Rory in disbelief, “We’re still together in ten years?”, she tells the Doctor “I understand, you’re got to leave me.” She hates being ‘clingy’- because everything she’s clung to she’s lost. She even makes fun of Rory for being ‘clingy’ when she was terrified too, and probably would have been even more so if their positions were reversed. When their roles are reversed in the worst way possible, and Rory is dead (er yes, this happened twice) she completely goes to pieces. She either folds in on herself and seems dead to the world, or she becomes utterly hysterical. (Remember?) Plus, her relief at not being abandoned to die in Flesh And Stone leads her to try and sleep with the Doctor, even though he protests, which is obviously not healthy behaviour at all.

But of course you can see where all this comes from. At this point in her story she’s never had a childhood with her parents, and Aunt Sharon doesn’t seem to have been the most attentive of carers. (She left 7-year-old Amy alone in the middle of the night! That can lead to prosecution, in Britain, and it’s just one of those things you just don’t do to a kid, no matter how mature they seem. What the hell, Aunt Sharon?) But once Amy gets her parents back and her childhood is restored, this behaviour lessened considerably. No more mocking people for being clingy, and she generally seems happier all round.

However, we still see Amy working through this fear- firstly in The Girl Who Waited, where she is accidentally abandoned and it turns her cold, hateful and hard. Then in The God Complex, Amy’s greatest fear is represented by herself sitting waiting- but it’s not waiting she fears, it’s waiting and no-one coming for her. True, a lot of that scene is about the Doctor, but it’s about Amy too. Lots of people’s worst fears spring from their childhood experiences- “I stole your childhood” -and Amy’s no different.

And of course, when Amy fears that Rory will abandon her for not being able to have children, she abandons him first. Luckily, she and her husband are able to talk it out, albeit in the most painful and stressful way imaginable. Anyway, there you have it. I think we know, beyond all shadow of a doubt, what Amy’s worst fear is.

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Amy Pond has no characteristics > She doesn’t despair, panic, and/or have complete breakdowns when in terrible situations.

(Sarcasm mode off)

In comparison to – for example – Rose, who always tried to do something (rip open the TARDIS, jump across dimensions) Amy will give up and hand her agency over to someone else, usually the Doctor (but sometimes Rory) when faced with terror or tragedy. Remember when Rory tells Amy, “I know you’ll never give up on me”? He was wrong, because she did give up…she stopped doing the CPR, she started crying over his body.

Amy Pond isn’t strong in the face of terrible, terrible things. She isn’t strong in the face of death. She isn’t strong in the face of real fear. She definitely, definitely isn’t strong in the face of losing a loved one. Instead she cries, she pleads, she freezes, she goes catatonic, she gives up, she can’t do it. She’s nearly lost Rory a couple of times that way. And her deciding, in Angels Take Manhattan, to go back in time for Rory- this is, I think, the only time where she’s lost him and she’s worked through her fear and panic and decided what she’s going to do. I think Series Five Amy would have reacted very differently to the scenario presented in the graveyard- I think she would have done what the Doctor wanted, gone back to the TARDIS, and never been happy again for a very, very long time. Luckily, she found her agency when she needed it most.

Anyway, the point is, Amy isn’t a strong female character. Not in that way. Not at all. And I love her for it.

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markandyxii:

besides-itstoowarm:

Here’s what makes them different: Amy is broken, angry, and scared of responsibility. Clara is responsible and often afraid, but typically adventurous and light-hearted. River is sensual, capable, independent, and self-sacrificing. Their lives do not all revolve around the Doctor. Amy’s life is a struggle between home and adventure, and that is SYMBOLIZED in Rory and the Doctor. Clara lives a perfectly normal, happy home life and jaunts off with the Doctor on Wednesdays. River has a whole life outside of the Doctor, with friends and a profession she loves. Her life kind of revolves around the Doctor, but she was programmed to kill him and then she married him, so it makes sense.

I can say that Rose, Martha, and Donna were all sassy, had low self esteem, and didn’t follow orders. How does that sound? You cannot boil complex characters down to their most basic traits and then say they’re all the same. Rose was very flirty. Donna was very fiery. All of their lives revolved around the Doctor. Rose in particular spent years doing nothing but searching for the Doctor.

This is not a Moffat problem. This isn’t a problem at all. This is an issue entirely made up by fans who want something to complain about.

Emphasis mine

I mean, can you imagine Amy looking after teenage children for a living? (You might have a bit more leeway after Series Six, but I’m still not sure it’d be something she’d ever want to do.) Or Clara being a model? We’ve seen both River and Clara stand over their mother’s grave but it was only Clara crying, River didn’t shed a single tear. Would Amy have ever declared she did something ‘disgracefully’? Would Clara ever call someone ‘stupid face’ as a term of endearment? And so on…

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