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timepiececlockFinally finished some laundry, so I'm off to San Diego in the next half hour. Comic Con, here I come!
In the mean time, here's a
I've been reading post-JE fics where 10.5 has to get a name so he can, at least for a while, operate in Rose's world. In my own brief response fic I gave him the generic handle "John Smith" which has canon traits because he's used it before as a false name. I've also seen some fics where he names himself.
Somehow, I've decided that doesn't work for me. It doesn't fit my romanticized sensibilities about names and [western-global] culture. 10.5 is the Doctor, but he's also a new person. And new people don't choose their own names. It's not what we do. Someone else names us, when we're little. Sure we may change that name later, either to rebel against our past selves and denounce our prior identity, or to embrace new family through marriage and the joining of names. But the name you're born with, the name you receive on your first day of life, your very first name--that should be given to you. Names are given.
10.5 was given two names in "Journey's End": The Doctor (by Donna, because she thought he was someone else) and "The Destroyer of Worlds" (but it was given to 10, even though 10.5 earned it.)
He needs a new name for the new world. Even if Rose calls him Doctor forever, his first name in the new universe, the name on paper, should be chosen by someone else. It's...human culture. Or western/globalized culture, at least.
I imagine that it's not Jackie or Rose or Pete, though. I imagine the Doctor's taking a walk somewhere, trying to escape the stifling press of domesticity that is being shoved on him for the first days when he crashes on the Tylers' couch, and he passes an older woman on a park bench. He sits, and they talk--about a hundred inconsequential things that are the same from universe to universe, because the Doctor loves people and loves to hear their little shining sad happy complex human stories.
And when he tells her that he doesn't have a name, not a human name, and he can't translate the name he remembers from ten prior lifetime into English, and that he's trying to think of one because he doesn't want to be John Smith for the next 60 years... the old woman looks at him, shakes her head, and tells him that choosing his own name is rubbish. It won't do at all. If he's part human now, and he wants a human name for his human half, then he can't name himself. So instead the Doctor asks her to name him, and she does. It's a good name, a solid name, and when Rose asks him how he chose it, he says "I didn't."
Anyway, I'm a romantic about names. I think names are important, and there's so much meaning and symbolism and so much emotion wrapped up in how we refer to ourselves, how other people refer to us, how the world remembers us in written record. Names have the power that we give them, no more and no less... but let's face it: we give names a *lot* of power, in our world. In our relationships, in our politics, even in our crime.
In the mean time, here's a
I've been reading post-JE fics where 10.5 has to get a name so he can, at least for a while, operate in Rose's world. In my own brief response fic I gave him the generic handle "John Smith" which has canon traits because he's used it before as a false name. I've also seen some fics where he names himself.
Somehow, I've decided that doesn't work for me. It doesn't fit my romanticized sensibilities about names and [western-global] culture. 10.5 is the Doctor, but he's also a new person. And new people don't choose their own names. It's not what we do. Someone else names us, when we're little. Sure we may change that name later, either to rebel against our past selves and denounce our prior identity, or to embrace new family through marriage and the joining of names. But the name you're born with, the name you receive on your first day of life, your very first name--that should be given to you. Names are given.
10.5 was given two names in "Journey's End": The Doctor (by Donna, because she thought he was someone else) and "The Destroyer of Worlds" (but it was given to 10, even though 10.5 earned it.)
He needs a new name for the new world. Even if Rose calls him Doctor forever, his first name in the new universe, the name on paper, should be chosen by someone else. It's...human culture. Or western/globalized culture, at least.
I imagine that it's not Jackie or Rose or Pete, though. I imagine the Doctor's taking a walk somewhere, trying to escape the stifling press of domesticity that is being shoved on him for the first days when he crashes on the Tylers' couch, and he passes an older woman on a park bench. He sits, and they talk--about a hundred inconsequential things that are the same from universe to universe, because the Doctor loves people and loves to hear their little shining sad happy complex human stories.
And when he tells her that he doesn't have a name, not a human name, and he can't translate the name he remembers from ten prior lifetime into English, and that he's trying to think of one because he doesn't want to be John Smith for the next 60 years... the old woman looks at him, shakes her head, and tells him that choosing his own name is rubbish. It won't do at all. If he's part human now, and he wants a human name for his human half, then he can't name himself. So instead the Doctor asks her to name him, and she does. It's a good name, a solid name, and when Rose asks him how he chose it, he says "I didn't."
Anyway, I'm a romantic about names. I think names are important, and there's so much meaning and symbolism and so much emotion wrapped up in how we refer to ourselves, how other people refer to us, how the world remembers us in written record. Names have the power that we give them, no more and no less... but let's face it: we give names a *lot* of power, in our world. In our relationships, in our politics, even in our crime.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 05:49 pm (UTC)And have a great time at the comic con :D
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Date: 2008-07-28 04:36 am (UTC)oh, well, I can always inflict the names on my kids, right?
I'm totally not doing that creepy thing where I catch up on my f-list and comment on old posts
Date: 2008-07-28 04:34 am (UTC)