grimorie | [January meme] Thirteenth Doctor for braddersbangerz (Reply)

Thirteenth Doctor of course :P for braddersbangerz

Thirteen! I love her the moment I saw her, she worked for me really fast, I love the feeling I got in The Woman Who Fell to Earth where it felt like she had to paraphrase American Gods she's fighting for the sheer joy of it, for the fuckin' holy delight of it.

The thing about Thirteen is she was born amidst contrasts, the Doctor was actually contemplating death before they changed their minds last minute, this is a last-minute reprieve life. She wants to be joyful and new this time around and she's grabbing every instance of joy she can find but she's also actually depressed. She's being hopeful with all her being because if she lets go for one second she'll sink into a quicksand of despair, just like what happened in The Ghost Monument.

She pinned all her hopes on finding the TARDIS, and for everything to be fixed once she gets her TARDIS back that when she reached her destination and didn't find it -- everything went crashing all around her. She also didn't tell the team a lot about herself because she never intended to travel with any of them, it was the TARDIS that decided to keep the Humans for the Doctor until the Doctor became attached to them.

Still, the pattern of behavior has set in with the Doctor, she didn't tell them a lot about herself other than surface level because she never intended for them to stay. And when the team decided they wanted to stay, I think the Doctor made a conscious decision to just not say anything about her life.

She looks open and carefree, but she's actually closed off. She doesn't answer any personal questions about herself because as missmarthanightingale put it:

ok but the doctor really has been going “due to various traumatic events, including the betrayal of my entire species followed up by that of my oldest friend, i will from now on refuse to acknowledge anything about my past beyond surface details”

I think that's a decent summation of where Thirteen's head at, and what's becoming more apparent since series 11, is that Thirteen shares Twelve's aversion to touch, but this time she's smart about it by not broadcasting it to anyone, since the last time they did, it seemed to encourage people rather than discourage people from coming into contact with him. Also, I feel like her touch telepathy is more sensitive this time around. (Again, I feel the text in series 12 is highly encouraging of that reading).

She's had a whole year (give or take a few more months in between) off from any kind of trauma and this year explodes into TRAUMA, BIG TRAUMA.

And this time around Thirteen doesn't know how to process it because she's supposed to be done with all this angst but here comes the Master, to paraphrase Dessa, her ex-best friend, ex-lover, excommunicated atheist (the list of things they used to be is longer than list of things they are) dragging all the baggage she thought she successfully stowed in the luggage compartment with added Gallifrey angst again.

She was done, she was out, but the Master pulled her back in and I think while anger is foremost in her mind there's a whole host of other messed up things too like: She hated Gallifrey and its society, and she wasn't going to step foot on that dusty orange rock again even if her lives depended on it. She saved them and then they turned around and stabbed her in the back.

She was glad to see the back of them but she never wanted them gone. She did that dance before and it's an old song but now played in a different tempo. I also don't think anger is the only thing she feels for the Master, because the Master during that message looked like how she felt post-Time War, back when she was in her Ninth (Tenth) life. Hollow. Regretful. Broken.

And now she's back to a lot of internalized anger, and I won't be surprised if she pulled out the psychic paper and just like with Twelve it would be full of swearing.

Thirteen's going to be in it for a while, and she's been dealing with it on a low simmer going on boil. On the other hand, it's so fun to watch the Doctor being 100% Sparkling Gallifreyan Sass. I can't wait to watch where all this is going tbh.