(no subject)

[crisis_control]

So I freely admit that I'm irrationally in love with Ten. Of course, as an NT MBTI type (aka the 'rational' ones <- snort, yes, right. NTs are as driven by irrational reasons as any one else, they're just driven to rationalise it. Any NT that tells you they don't run on emotion is lying, in denial, or just insufficiently self-aware. Because we're all elitist snobs. But that's a rant for another day.) this is actually just short-hand for 'there are a huge number of reasons not to love Ten, but in spite of that--'

So some Ten-bashers got my hackles up earlier today (seriously, it's ridiculous - some Ten!fans bash on everything non-Ten, which gets everyone bashing on Ten!fans - and I refuse to use the word 'fangirls' in this derogatory context, because that is patently unfair, unjustified, and a total insult to all the very intelligent ladies I know; and besides, Ten has his fair shares of fanboys too). I believe the gist of the rant (once I cut away the fact that Ten is occasionally unpopular simply because he is popular) was that Ten is immature. I have a friend (Eleven fan), who does like Ten very much, but can't love him as much as Eleven because, in her words, when things go very wrong, he goes into what's essentially a childish fit and breaks things.

I'm not denying it - which is why I keep saying my love for Ten is irrational. He's got all these bad things going for him. But what I've finally realised is that he's got even more good things going for him.

It finally strikes me that I don't like Ten because he's perfect. Ten is messed up. Of all the New Who Doctors, Ten's head is probably the most screwed up. If you want the stable one, you don't pick Ten. I'd hazard a guess to say that he's probably even more screwed up than all the Classic Who Doctors combined as well, since he has the entire tragedy of the Time War weighing on him too. And every time Ten starts to get a little better (Rose), things happen (Doomsday), and then he recovers a bit (Martha), and then even more things happen (the Master), and I firmly believe that if Donna had stayed with him longer (oh I love Donna so much), she might have been able to fix him.

But she couldn't, and the damage to Ten's psyche is horrific.

Now this doesn't come out very obviously in the series. It's not smack-you-in-the-face, because this is TV, and this is entertainment, and this is nominally supposed to be a children's show (except when it's busy ripping your heart out or scaring you half to death). It's not even something that seems to come out in fic very much, which makes me wonder if people just don't twig it, but it's there. When you have a man who walks away from everything and everyone because he believes he breaks everything he touches, and simply can't see all the bright, shining good that he's done, that is pretty much as low as you can go.

Eleven has much less of that dark shadow over him, but when it does hit him, mid-series, he withdraws. It's the more adult, more rational thing to do, and it's also absolutely heartbreaking (and I don't blame him, especially knowing what he went through as Ten). But Ten - the thing I love so, so much about Ten, is that he keeps trying.

Depression is a clawing blackhole, and probably something a person needs to experience firsthand to truly understand. Alternatively, try sleep deprivation for about three months. The pain and fatigue achieves approximately the same effect - it strips you right down to the person you really are, when you take away all the pretense and moral high horses that we sit on. It's easy to take the high ground when you have the resources to cope with it. It's easy to be a good person when you're not going out of your mind.

And when you can see all possible outcomes of a situation, when you know that you can apply just a bit of leverage here or there and utterly break the system that's hurting you, the temptation will always be there. Sometimes the pain will even tell you you're doing it for the greater good.

I love the RTD seasons because they haul you right up to the edge and ask you all the hard questions, the ones that don't have answers. And I love Ten because despite all of that, despite all that he's gone through, all that people have put him through, and all that he's capable of doing, he still manages to see all the brilliance there is in life, and to make everyone around him better for it. Yes, he sometimes makes the darker choice (I can't say wrong - who are we to judge it?) and he has absolutely no regard for his own wellbeing (who would, in his circumstances), but that's life and all its imperfections. Waters of Mars went horribly wrong, but in another world, another script, it could have gone so right (Pompeii comparisons anyone?).

Because if we paralyse ourselves by withdrawing, we do no harm, but we never do any good either. In some ways - actually in so many ways, I wish that Amy and Rory's arc had been with Ten, just so that he could finally get some closure and some reassurance that not everything he touches crumbles into dust. Yes, regeneration and all that, same Doctor, same new new Doctor, but there's always a disconnect between Ten and Eleven for me, because there was so much heartbreak that Ten had that just didn't really seem to carry over to Eleven during the regeneration (what happened to 'I'm better off on my own'? You don't just change your mind like that). The greatest tragedy of the RTD/DT era, I feel, is that it ended without sorting out all the heartbreak and self-loathing, and none of this was ever really picked up in the new season (even though I really don't think I could have taken much more of the drama emo wangst.)

I can't really comment on the diametric between New Who and Classic Who, on account of the fact that I don't have enough spare hours lying around to go watch Classic Who, but I think it's pretty safe to say that New Who!Doctor has been through a lot more than Classic Who!Doctor. To compare them, to expect post-Time War!Doctor to be as whole (and sane and unbroken) as pre-Time War!Doctor, is hardly fair.

Ten gets me, because he loses everything, and still has the courage to wear both hearts on his sleeves, knowing that they're simply going to get broken again. There is nothing I respect more than that.