Court's Court

theblackeagleofthenorth:

It’s performances like this which make me disappointed when I hear people say the don’t like Eccelston or skip over that whole season just to get to Tennant. Tennant was fantastic and a brilliant Doctor, but there wouldn’t be a Tennant Doctor without Eccleston’s Doctor. The way Tennant’s Doctor was portrayed was the effect that Rose had on Nine. In the beginning, Nine was harsh and unforgiving having come back from the Time War, his time with Rose softened that harsh attitude and it’s really shown in this episode.

“Just this once, everybody lives!” Has to be my absolute favourite line in all the history of Doctor who because in that episode everyone did.

Okay so this episode, and this scene in particular, always strikes a chord with me.  It’s just so true. 

this got really long so EW GROSS DON’T READ THIS BECAUSE IT’S JUST SAP AND FEELS

      For most people, hurt isn’t normal. It’s a part of life and everyone has to deal with it, and everyone hits rough patches, but for most people, hurt isn’t normal. It’s hurt. It’s pain. It’s loss. It’s out of the ordinary. That really sucks, and an unexpected cosmic slap in the face can rip a person apart, but even when that happens, it still isn’t “normal.” It’s not the level at which they operate, not really. They still know that, usually, you don’t get cosmically slapped in the face. People don’t usually die, kids don’t usually go hungry, parents usually love their children, jobs are usually kept, and justice is usually served. Their normal is happiness. That may make the pain more shocking or hard to handle, but still, their normal is happiness.

     But that’s not the case for a few people. Some people’s normal isn’t happiness. Some people have grown with pain. They’ve been nursed on it. They’ve lived it, breathed, and fought against it for as long as they can remember. They might have known sustained happiness, they might not have, but they’re normal isn’t happiness. Whether it’s theirs personally or that of those they love, their normal is pain.

     When you constantly see pain and hurt and heartache and loss, you come to expect it. It wears on you, beats you down, but it’s where you learn to operate.  And it fucking sucks. You don’t necessarily sit around and mope about all the time, but it’s a fact and you just have to power through it.  A real “win” isn’t even in your realm of possibility because you know that there’s always damages, always losses. You stop believing in or even hoping for good things and start just trying for as little collateral damage as possible. That’s the thing about fighting for “good”: you never really win. There’s always going to be more pain and more suffering and more evil. And it usually seems like the good takes more hits than the bad. 

    So when these little, perfect days come along — the ones where everyone lives — that’s not just a “return to normal” or the “setting of things right” as it is for the people whose normal is happiness; for someone whose normal is loss and hurt and heartache, a day without losses, a day without pain, a day where everyone lives is an elevation from normal. It’s your first high, it’s winning the lottery, it’s amazing sex, it’s falling in love, it’s the day your kid is born — it’s something so unexpectedly, unfathomably perfect that it can’t be explained. It’s something that you never saw coming, something so good and pure that you didn’t even know that you could wish to wish for it. 

     For someone who’s seen as much pain and hurt and loss as The Doctor, a day where everyone lives isn’t just a good day in the sense of a return to normalcy; it’s a tiny, tiny taste of what most people get every day — something he knows he can’t ever really have, but gets to taste “just this once.”

(Source: flapperorslapper, via livinmokotory)