i don’t know how to articulate it but the doctor asking rose, “how long are you gonna stay with me?” makes me want to break every bone in my body and crush them into dust . here you have the doctor, a near-immortal, asking a question he knows the answer to. he knows any response of rose’s will ring hollow in his reality. two months, ten years, four decades—the numerical value doesn’t matter. the problem with the answer is always going to be that it’s not enough. he knows it, but he asks her anyway because he loves her. he loves her enough to ask.
and rose! beautiful, human rose tells him, “forever” and the doctor smiles so widely that it’s electric. he knows her forever will never be as long as his, but the easy way it fell from her lips…she loves him. she knows she won’t be able to have his forever with him, but she promises her own forever. she gives herself wholly to him. he loves her enough to ask and she loves him enough to answer!!!! isn’t that crazy isn’t it batshit insane to love like this these were literally VOWS!!!!!!
[ ID: A digital illustration of Hunter from the Owl House. He is in his season three design with a wolf shirt on. He looks similar to Eda when she is in harpy mode, with some exceptions. Cardinal wings resembling flapjack’s are on his back outstretched, and similar red feathers are on his ears, face, and stomach. He also has a red bird tail that sits behind him, along with his hands that now look like bird talons. He is smiling while saying, “Hello.” End ID]
the thing about doctor/river is that the blatant romance is a defense mechanism. it’s playacting it’s how they sketch out the boundaries of their relationship because they can never be sure of how the scales of intimacy are balanced - they love each other, sure, but they are so rarely in a place where they both know enough about each other for mutual trust. so you get these really interesting juxtapositions like how eleven is in full flirty mode for impossible astronaut/day of the moon to the point where it feels like they’re about to make out every time they’re in the same frame but at the same time he dismisses her with “trust you? seriously?” and is shocked when she actually kisses him goodbye. in let’s kill hitler they flirt like hell when she is literally trying to murder him but not at all when they save each others’ lives. in the wedding of river song kovarian complains about them being lovey-dovey in front of her but right after that the doctor attempts to reset the timeline and river has to drag him kicking and screaming into respecting her enough to tell her the truth. in angels take manhattan we get both “just you wait till my husband gets home” (flaunting their relationship to grayle) and “never let him see the damage” (she doesn’t trust him to love her as a flawed, mortal person). they’re out of sync all the time, so sincerity is off the table except when it’s a necessary shortcut to trust that doesn’t exist yet - river whispering his name to him in the library when he doesn’t know her yet, their literal wedding being a tool the doctor uses to convince her to let him “die.”
the thing about “hide the damage” in particular is that river was responding to the doctor’s own fear of seeing the damage. she lied to him because she was trying to give him what he wanted, even if he couldn’t admit it. and it applies both to the broken wrist and to their relationship in general. every time he looks at her all he can see is the pain of her death, and she can see that he’s holding back even if she doesn’t exactly know why. this was always going to be a barrier to true intimacy between them unless they could be linear for long enough to know and see each other as they are, not as they’re going to be or as they were.
that’s why husbands of river song is such a perfect resolution for them. the only way river would ever be honest enough to let him see her insecurities is if she didn’t know who he was, so it had to be twelve and not eleven. and it specifically had to be twelve fresh from losing his memories of clara, so that he’d stop running away from confronting her death and just give them those 24 years together on darillium to really get to know each other, to see the ugliness and the imperfections and stay together anyway. it makes perfect sense that after that they could reach the level of love and trust river has for “her doctor” in the library, in a way that just isn’t possible with a relationship built on whirlwind dates done out of order and nothing else.
just some silly little drawing ideas, qbbh in clothes from older history i.e. 1930’s 1920’s (idk if you draw him still but if not that’s ok! :D) or baghera and pomme fluff!
lo! a human person whom no danger nor destruction ever follows!! do NOT look into the darkness beneath his hat no it does not matter how much his normal human eyes are glowing do NOT look. looking too closely gets you too close to his teeth. which are also normal