#i'm unhinged about them 24/7 and this is just a glimpse of what my brain is like half the time lmao

[pia-writes-things]

#river and the fucked up punds' dynamic

ok i'll bite, tell me about it

Ok, so, first, that typo is BURNING my eyes 🥲🥲 I'm so sorry Amy and Rory, I would never disrespect you like that on purpose 🥺

Second, this will basically be my Ways To Heal chapters about the Ponds but in essay form, so if you wanna read the angst-filled version, it's there 🥰

Putting all of my unhinged thoughts under a read more because, as predicted, this ended up quite long. And it wasn't prompted, so I'm glad to know I could really do a presentation about them on the spot ^^

So, to start, you have the Ponds, a couple that started, well, not bad, but not great either. But during the course of the 3 seasons we got them, we saw them choose each other, again and again and again. And everytime they chose each other, every time we saw what perfect life looked like for them, there was a kid in the picture. The most obvious example of that is Amy's choice obviously, but the beginning of season 6 is also a big indicator. When we beging season 6, they're settled. They haven't seen the Doctor in a while and they built a domestic life that is theirs. And later in the first two episodes, you learn that Amy thinks she is pregnant. And she is worried for the baby, for what travelling in the Tardis might have done to it (which, in retrospect, she was right about ^^). Her worry, the fact she wants to talk to the Doctor about it, and the fact that Rory and her started to build a life together on Earth makes me think that they had talked about it, had planned for it, and maybe were considering starting trying. So, clearly, having a baby was really important for them. There are a myriad of other moments when we're shown it was really important for them : when Amy explains to Mme Kovarian why she's more than happy to kill her in The Wedding of River Song, the beginning of season 7 and the whole reason she and Rory are about to divorce, and, whether you believe it to be canon or not, the fact that they adopted a kid in Manhattan. A fundamental fact about Amy and Rory is that they wanted kids together, and didn't get to raise Melody. They had to accept River as their daughter while she was already an adult, and probably older than them. They had to accept also, especially Amy, that her birth meant they couldn't have children of their own anymore. They had to accept that their own daughter was always away, never quite fitting in with them. They had to accept that they would never be the family they wished they had.

On the other hand, you have River. River whose life is entirely in disorder compared to her parents. They met her before they knew who she was. They were her friends before they were her parents. She had to lie to their face countless times to protect time and prevent a paradox. She never got to really experience life as their daughter. We got glimpses in The angels take Manhattan and in The Ruby's curse but that's it. And even then, it's moments in her life, always fleeting.

That's where my first point of the fucked up dynamic appears (admittedly I only have two but whatever). See, an established fact of River and the Doctor's story is that they forbid each other at different moments to change their story in any way shape or form. And that include the Ponds' story as a family. At the end of A good man goes to war, the Doctor promises Amy that he will find her daughter. At the beginning of Let's kill Hitler, he's still looking for her. My personal interpretation is that he either didn't look for her, or made the choice not to intervene. I can't believe that the Doctor, clever as he is, Mr. "The laws of time are mine and they will obey me" couldn't find his best friend's daughter, his wife, as a kid, even though he knew when he last saw her. At this point in season 6, he knows the kid in 1969 is River. So, my personal headcanon is that he chose not to look for her, or not to bring her back to Amy and Rory. Because, and that's the thing, if he'd found Melody, she would not become River. If Melody got to be raised by the Ponds and not the Silence, she would never have become River. So, to keep his promise to Amy, he would have had to break the one he did to his wife when she was dying. And he just couldn't do that. So, indirectly, River was responsible for her own fucked up childhood. She was responsible for her parent's unhappiness. Even if it wasn't her direct responsibility, the consequences and implications are there. And, I think, as a daughter, that is a very fucked up thing to know and realise. And River being River, knowing so much about everyone and being so used to being out of order, I think she knew. She knew she was a paradox and the Doctor couldn't change anything about her history. She didn't know about her death and what she told him then, but she knew the rest. So she always knew they were doomed from the start as a family.

Which ties to my second point about their fucked up dynamic. River never got to be raised by her parents. At most, Rory and Amy were her "parent-friends" when they were kids. But it's not the same thing. So, knowing that, knowing all that we said in the precedent paragraph, and knowing that she was raised by Mme Kovarian and the Silence, I think that "Hiding the damages" is as much the Doctor's fault as it is indirectly the Ponds' faults. I think we can all agree that River had a very fucked up, beyond traumatizing, childhood. She didn't have any parents, she was shot at by her own mother (again, not Amy's fault, she didn't know, but still), she was brainwashed, trained to kill, and, weirdly, Mme Kovarin doesn't strike me as a very nurturing parental figure (*irony itensifies*). She never had anyone who could really listen to her, or even know her completely. As a child, no one ever knew her real self, or no one bothered to learn to know her. She was either a future weapon or a story designed to fit in Leadworth. Her parents weren't there for her when she needed them, or they couldn't really be her parents. And - and !- tying all this up with my precedent point, when they finally got to be her parents, she had to live with the fact that her birth, her story, fucked them up beyond measure. She was, though it wasn't her fault, partially responsible for their unhappiness. So, she learned to hide the damages. She kept lying, like she had always done, she kept the pretense of being a good psychopath with no feelings, because it's easier than showing to her parents how much exactly her own story fucked them and her up.

And, I think this will be my conclusion, to me, River being a psychopath is actually just her being traumatised and coping unhealthily. We never really saw her being a real psychopath, or at least a cold-hearted assassin who would shoot at anyone like the show tries to imply she is. She has feelings, and she shows them all the time. Even in The Husband of River Song or Let's kill Hitler, which are the episodes where they try to show River being a psychopath, she isn't really one. The people she wants to kill are themselves assassins, or the person she was literally brainwashed to hate. And she doesn't even really want to kill them for the most part, only scam them. Even the Doctor, in the end, she saves him. To me, River's "psychopath" tendencies, her selfishness that so many people in the fandom hold against her, are just the ways she found to cope with her traumas. It's the only way she found to cope with lying all the time, never having the stability of knowing people and people she loves knowing her. It's easier for her to pretend she is what Mme Kovarian and the Silence wanted to make her that actually showing her true self, when half the time, no one is there to receive it. It's easier to be that way than to be vulnerable. Especially because every time she was vulnerable in her life, it ended badly for her.

So, tldr: River is very fucked up by her childhood and that informs her relationship with her parents, as well as the relationship between her parents. I love them all very much, and they love each other, but apart from Marisa, Asriel and Lyra in His dark materials, the Ponds are probably the most fucked up fictional family I know.

Also, a lot of this essay is based on my interpretations of canon, the characters, and some plotholes Moffat gave us, so I know I might be wrong or biased on some points. But here, you have my rotating thoughts about them! I think about this more than I care to admit tbh ^^

#dw #doctor who #river song #amy pond #rory williams #ask #sae's the best #pia's oversharing #this ended up being very long but I regret nothing #i'm unhinged about them 24/7 and this is just a glimpse of what my brain is like half the time lmao #hope you liked it!