Doctor Who Vid: When I Was A Boy [Amy, Amy/Rory]

[beccatoria]

I originally planned to post this today in order to get it out there ahead of the new series premiere, but it feels wrong and conspicuous to do so, now, without mentioning Elisabeth Sladen. This is not a vid about Sarah Jane, but it is a vid about a show that would have been much lesser without Elisabeth Sladen. The universe, both fictional and real, is a worse place without her in it.

Title: When I Was A Boy
Video: Doctor Who
Audio: When I Was A Boy // Dar Williams
Summary: Amy Pond was a boy too.

Direct download available here. 51 megs approx. RightClickSaveAs.

Password: vidses

Watch on Vimeo

Cross-posted to vidding and dwfanvids.

Other vids available here.

Comments

[chaila.livejournal.com]

This is so Amy; she's so active and imaginative and expressive, and she is not like other people but she does not need to be fixed. I love the sense in this that she has grown up from wee Amelia, smiling that glorious kid smile at the Doctor, but not away from her. And that's such a vital part of Amy, I think. The way you've vidded the song, it comes across really strongly as identification with childhood, with who Amy was and what she dreamed of then. When you're a child, you don't care about expectations or rules, and Amy grew up and...still didn't conform to expectations or rules. I really do like the POV switch to Rory at the end, as well as the preceding section that blends them; with all the use of Roman!Robot Rory and the Pandorica (and maybe I was paying better attention this time), I got a great sense of that time being pivotal, changing Rory too, into someone who won't want to change Amy into everyone else's idea of a grownup in Leadworth but will want to go have adventures with her.

Casting the Doctor as Peter Pan is just perfect, both for all the ways it's perfect for his role in Amy's life and for all the ways it doesn't play out like that. Though the vid is so much more than that section, I think that whole metaphor perfectly encapsulates the whole vid and all that's great about season 5 so I'm going to ramble about it for a minute. (Confession: I love Finding Neverland, like, A LOT). The Doctor, the perpetual child mischief-maker, who forgets in order to stay young--has to forget to stay young, because truth is hard and steals your innocent wonder and makes you old--surrounding himself with other children who can only stay and have adventures as long as they too are young and innocent and full of wonder (his youth is artificially imposed; theirs is real and so it doesn't last). When they grow up, they have to leave and forget him and forget their adventures and go back to "real life." And so it's a tragedy every time someone grows up. (Oh hey, Donna).

And Amy goes to Neverland, finally (he promised Amelia that she could go, and then he left without her and she grew up, but not all the way because she didn't forget that he'd promised and she was afraid of growing up before she'd gotten to go; adults can't get in, you know, because they have forgotten how to believe). And then she has impossible adventures and she does grow up and has grown up, but it doesn't change her into someone who wants to do anything but live in Neverland as a grownup. She doesn't have to forget and she doesn't have to leave. Growth and adulthood don't have to mean forgetting the joy and wonder of being a kid; there is no "adulthood" line you cross, beyond which you must either want different things or do things you don't want. Instead, Amy Pond goes to Neverland and changes and grows up there and then Amy Frakking Pond remembers it all. Amy Pond lives in a fairy tale and scoffs at your Neverland rules. (Oh Amy, why have I not vidded Amy? <333) And now I've cast Rory in Peter Pan too, because that's where "To die will be an awfully big adventure" comes from. <-- Look, feelings about Rory! \o/

In conclusion, we're all fairy tales. And thus, it is really about River?

(And oh look, I'm vomiting sincerity and fairy tale rainbows and parentheses all over your journal. You know what that means: THREE SLEEPS TO DOCTOR SONG).

[tabbyclaw.livejournal.com]

According to Moffat, the Peter Pan parallel is exactly why Amy spends her first off-planet adventure in her nightie.

[chaila.livejournal.com]

Aww that's pretty awesome! :)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

*makes flaily arm-wavey movements at THIS WHOLE COMMENT*

I want to vomit fairy tale rainbows and parentheses BACK AT YOU because this is gorgeous and awesome and so true and OMGS YOU ARE RIGHT ABOUT DEATH BEING AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE I hadn't realised that yet and I managed to make you care just a little about Rory and your analysis of youth and neverland and Peter Pan makes me wibbly AND I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU HAVEN'T VIDDED AMY YET EITHERRRRRR (get on that).

One interesting thing I read in a Moffat interview was him directly acknowledging the Doctor's habit of getting 'em while they're young and then ditching them back before they're too old, before they've...well grown up with him I suppose, and how this season part of what he'll have to deal with is that he has gotten properly involved with Amy and Rory now - that like, he's sort of entangled and can't just drop them off before they grow up and he "ruins" them for ordinary, boring non-neverland life. So, vindication for it being totally deliberate?

*glomps you*

[chaila.livejournal.com]

Now I just can't decide whether I want to vid the Amy-rewrites-time theme, or try to find something that's about her fucking with all the fairy tale conventions, because the song I already have does the former but not the latter.

him directly acknowledging the Doctor's habit of getting 'em while they're young and then ditching them back before they're too old, before they've...well grown up with him I suppose, and how this season part of what he'll have to deal with is that he has gotten properly involved with Amy and Rory now.

OMG BECKA I AM SO EXCITED AND THINGS LIKE THIS MAKE ME HOPEFUL FOR THE WHOLE THING AND EXPECTATIONS ARE SCARY AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?

Two sleeps! One for you, by the time you see this. :D

[promethia_tenk]

I've loved Amy from the get-go, but somehow in recent months the whole thing has just taken on so much more intensity and color in my mind--thanks in part to some really excellent vids. And now your comment might in fact be some of my favorite meta that I've read on her. Nothing good to add, but all you say seems lovely and right.

Oh Amy, why have I not vidded Amy? <333
Please do--I would love to see your take on her.

In conclusion, we're all fairy tales. And thus, it is really about River?
The WHOLE SHOW is really about River. By which I actually mean that River is about the whole show.

[chaila.livejournal.com]

Yay! It's actually really interesting because I was thinking about Amy earlier today. While I did always like her and enjoy watching her, she did not make me flaily with either meta or character love until her arc came together with all the epic themes at the end of season 5. While I quite often adore female characters that subvert metanarrative expectations or conventions (like River), usually I am still primarily all about the characters in my connecting with stories, in terms of, I don't much care how well the story structure or metanarrative or themes are being set up if I'm not connecting with the characters or identifying with them in some way, emotionally or intellectually. Yet Amy (and River too, to a certain extent, who I obviously LOVE SO MUCH yet who in many ways is not all that much like the characters I tend to fall this hard for) has really become an exception for me; she's a character I actually love SO MUCH MORE because of her role in this metanarrative. I wouldn't say I identify or particularly connect with Amy even, but meta about the themes of the season and the way her particular arc embodies them and makes the whole metanarriatve work makes me just ADORE her. (And I'd very much like to vid her if I could find the right song for any of this!) This whole show really is an exception to all my rules in terms of drawing me in almost primarily with the metanarrative. Prior to the season-ender last year, though I like Amy and Eleven, I was still really watching always and only for River. But when the themes all came together for everyone, I retroactively loved the whole thing with new eyes.

By which I actually mean that River is about the whole show.

Oh, that is such a good way to state it.

[promethia_tenk]

I find Moffat's writing for Who pretty unique, at least amongst the TV I've watched, in how much attention and importance it does place on that meta narrative--on all the layers of narrative, really, in a very traditionally literary way. Symbolism, allusions, all the layering of tropes and themes does contribute substantially to the story, and I find that much of the characterization and character development does happen on those levels just as much as it does on a more realistic level. All of which I suppose makes it more difficult for some people to make a connection with but I know that I love it to teeny tiny bits. So, yes, I am with you in that normally my connection to characters has to be, first and foremost, personal in that way you describe. And yet I'm loving having this new way to engage with them as well.

Interestingly, I'm sort of the opposite from you in respect to how I got into River and Amy. With River I watched the Library episodes just a week or two before the Angels ones, and while I liked her quite a lot and was very intrigued by her, what really grabbed me and prompted me to write about her was the symbolism around her. That balanced out and I became more and more invested in her character as a character as we went along and it became easier to see who she was and to piece together her motivations, but a huge chunk of my involvement with her has always been with that symbolism, which was just more accessible. (ETA: I'm making it sound like I wasn't excited to be watching River during the last season, which is patently not true and I have the squee posts to prove it. But my interest in her meta has always been there and always been deeply ingrained in my understanding of the character.) Amy, on the other hand, I just immediately liked in that personal way that one normally connects to characters and while I enjoyed looking at her storyline and some of her symbolism and themes and discussing them, at the end of the day it kept coming back to "Amy Pond is fantastic, simple as." And I can't say that my fundamental approach to her has changed all that much; I've mostly just deepened in my appreciation.

That said, I would love to see any and all discussion or vids you cared to produce about Amy--I'm a great fan of your perspective on most things.

Prior to the season-ender last year, though I like Amy and Eleven, I was still really watching always and only for River. But when the themes all came together for everyone, I retroactively loved the whole thing with new eyes.
This makes me very, very happy. I find it an astonishing show in almost all ways, and unlike anything else I've ever seen. I am embarrassingly evangelical about it *g* And then I joke sometimes that Steven Moffat has written me a television show and is just being nice in letting the rest of y'all watch it too ;)