#u ever remember how jonny is british. anyway. doctor who.

[equalseleventhirds]

makes some soup makes some soup makes some soup

(since this ep said 'smirke was hubristic and incorrect' but also did not definitively say the eye & the other fears aren't distinct... and also bcos it's a routine for me now. i like to make fear soup. it is relaxing & fun.)

spirally stuff for sure, i sorta get why ppl were saying it was spiral (but it's not! it's soup!): 'smoothly shifting steps that grow and shrink to hidden whims', 'i have simply misplaced it for a moment', 'the one who sits in the central chamber cannot remember his name', 'a cacophony of undulating architecture', 'the corridors would invert every forty-seven seconds and shift incline every twenty, as well as growing a door to a staircase every two minutes', 'this didn’t make sense. it, it wasn’t fair!', 'but the fact that none of them should be there. that it doesn’t make sense. and it must make sense. there must be a system. there must be, because if there isn’t...'

eye a LOT, fitting for a smirke-monument and the Hubris of Knowledge (and we get the seeking knowledge and the fear of their true selves being seen! love that): 'desperate to add another sense to their observances', 'hanging over their faces to hide the looks of confusion and fear', 'it simply takes observation and thought and patience and, above all else, intelligence', 'they have spent their lives in holy objectivity, cleaving one gordian knot after another in the arena of publication and debate', 'how long has he been watching now?', 'timing and observing the rotations of the passageways above him', 'they’ll remember him forever, the first to escape the monument'

'the arena of publication and debate' feels also a little slaughter-y, possibly (violence metaphor about cutthroat academia fuck yeah thank you jonny), but u kno what's more slaughtery. 'he picks up his chunk of granite, and begins to smash the doctor’s head in yet again' [sounds of brutal peer review] thank u anil u fucking gem

lonely as well! fitting tbh, putting yourself separate and above other ppl is pretty lonely): 'argue about the angle with nobody', 'they will be the first to escape' (with the implication of being the only to escape), 'his peers are ignorant amateurs beside him'. (and i rly enjoy the implication that they are choosing their loneliness and suffering for that choice. hubris.)

some corruption, 'beyond their chipped teeth and rotten gums', 'their beards are long and matted with their prevaricating spittle', 'staining bloody notes into a torn and discoloured robe'

'there is a pattern to the movements, an unseen system to the shifting of the doors and the opening of the tunnels' is spiral, sure, but is it not also web. the unseen system? the secret pattern? 'they are only being led by the siren call of their pathetic little biases' too, and 'the thought of starting over, of composing yet another theory, fills him with a deep dread' (the inevitability of his actions... he's gonna do it anyway.)

some rather more metaphysical vast ideas: 'time means nothing in the pursuit of knowledge', and ‘you’re still working on mineral theory? how painfully outdated.’ (bcos yeah the idea that ur Outdated is! fear of the Bigness and ur insignifiance!) and the doctor's fall is also vast-y, for all he's not afraid of the falling (suddenly falling when u shouldn't be tho... the fear of ur fall from grace/power/etc... hm.)

i'm... not sure if the like, loss & hopelessness the various academics feel at losing their pet theories is desolation? it's not fire but it is loss of what they love and value... like, not that they don't deserve it, but is it desolation? hey jonny is all loss & destruction of what ppl love desolation???? even without the fire imagery? (pls say yes bcos otherwise what is the POINT)

and buried, 'fingers that end in jagged nails probing, eager, desperate for the wide and stately passages of marble' (dig...), 'this prison of geometry', 'the ground opens up below the poor, panicking doctor'

stranger: 'his curled lip is reflected in the face of this pretender' (and yo what's it mean that the professor is the stranger! another victim! fuck off smirke in particular!!) (altho 'his mouth breaks into a smile, lip splitting in the grin, spilling a drop or two of scarlet onto skin so pale as to now be near-translucent' makes him sound Uncanny & stranger, altho also a little bit flesh)

some of the more injury-body-horror stuff from flesh: 'smashing bone and cracking skull on the stairs and columns he impacts', 'lies still, his body twisted and broken'

‘scampers over to where he fell’ followed by a rly targeted gloating (like he was just WAITING for the doctor to fall in there so he could be mocked) feels hunt without the violence? the more psychological aspects, maybe. i’m not sure.

'he knows it will knit itself back together, slowly, painfully, as it always has before' brings up the painful-immortality aspect of the end

#tma spoilers #fear soup #managed to do this riiiiight before leaving work #might've missed stuff but. soup. here u go piping hot. #some of it is stretching but when is it not! metaphors get complicated!! #also while typing this i did in fact realize that the doctor without a name might be.............. uh....................... #u ever remember how jonny is british. anyway. doctor who.