(no subject)

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Can anyone remember in which book Tom or Carl says something along the lines of, "After all, most people think it's normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your heart"? I feel like it's Dilemma but I don't see it on a flickthrough.


So I was talking to several RL fannish friends last weekend and we were talking about Donna. One of the friends said that although she was heartbroken when Donna left the show, she didn't hate the way in which she left the show - in which she forgets everything about travelling with the Doctor, and can never remember on pain of death - to be not as heartbreaking for Donna as, say, the way Rose left the show (trapped in an alternate universe). Her point was that Donna had been happy in her life before; it was only knowing that the Doctor was out there that was so painful for her; and that also Donna's husband is probably very nice and that it's a terrible thing to say that nobody can ever be happy, productive, or important in a normal Doctor-less life.

And I said, look, all of those things are very true, but the only way I can think about it is by remembering this stuff in these books I read. I can only think about Donna with a nameless sorrow at the bottom of her heart that she thinks is just normal. (Interestingly, this is quite a lot like what happens to Amy after Rory gets erased from history in season 5.)

And then I decided I wanted to make a graphic (likely terrible, but hey) based around this idea.

Comments

[fiveforsilver]

Pretty sure that's in Deep Wizardry, when Nita was struggling with her agreement to be the Silent Lord.

I loathed the way Donna left the show and it bothers me so much that I recently went out and looked for some fanfic to see if anyone "fixed" it. I found a couple that I really liked, too.

[eavanmoore.livejournal.com]

haha right on it.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

You're right! And conservative estimate I've read that scene 1000000 times, IDK why I was confused!

[flyingrat42.livejournal.com]

Someone wrote one-- a fixit, that is-- that is *set in YW-verse*, and explains things perfectly. Absolutely incredible. I've been trying to locate it again for a while.

[flyingrat42.livejournal.com]

...Aaaand here it is, posted to myriadwords.

Journey's Dawn, by ameretrifle (http://myriadwords.livejournal.com/54567.html)

[fiveforsilver]

This, maybe? I don't usually read book-related fanfic (at least, not of books I like), so I haven't read it, but it looks interesting.

[fiveforsilver]

Well, that was surprisingly fun. I was a little iffy about it in the first chapter, but after that it was great (and I say this as a fan of Ten, in general).

ETA: And I was going to say, you might like this one. It's my favorite fix that I've run across.

[eavanmoore.livejournal.com]

No, it's deep wizardry, when Carl is counseling meet on the consequences of breaking her oath.

[posicat.livejournal.com]

Agreed, it was the discussion where he said that if she broke her oath, she'd loose her wizardry, she'd loose memories of those people she met through it. She'd have this nameless sorrow at the bottom of her heart from the loss she no longer remembered.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

You're totally right. I have no idea why I thought it was Dilemma, I've read that DW scene so many times!

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

Ugh this is exactly how I feel about Donna leaving!! That line, about the "nameless sorrow at the bottom of your heart," is one that has stuck with me since the first time I read it, when -- as a thirteen-year-old -- I was terrified by the idea that growing up might mean thinking it was normal to feel this kind of sorrow. And I was also terrified by the idea that Carl would suggest this as a comfort!

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think Carl meant that to be comforting - I think he meant it at least a bit as a warning; it's always struck me as one of the most brilliant statements in the novel of the unknown but pervasive effects of the Lone Power and of the failed human Choice, that this type of sorrow isn't normal and shouldn't be there.

But yeah, it really stuck with me as well, and then when that happened to Donna ... I just can't think about it any other way.

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

I guess "comfort" is probably not the right word there -- I mean, just the simple fact that that was on his "more-or-less good things that could happen even if you broke your promise" list was like a punch in the gut, and it WAS a significant realization moment, for me, of the small-but-pervasive presence of the failed Choice. Still punches me in the gut every time I think about it.

[triad-serpent.livejournal.com]

I bawl my eyes out every time I read that scene... <3

My two cents'

[shadowsinfire.livejournal.com]

I found my mind making the same link to Deep Wizardry when I watched Journey's End. I think what bothered me the most about Donna forgetting was that the Doctor didn't give her a choice - she didn't want to forget, but he couldn't bear to let her die, so he took that choice from her.

Nita, on the other hand, heads into the choice blindly, but when faced with it head on, she also chooses to die, to save the world (give up love for life), rather than to nvalidate her oath and forget her wizardry. And Kit was faced with a choice too, of trying to stop her, or taking her place, or doing something, but he too chooses not to because he knows how much it means to her. In some ways it's a pity that the book is entirely from Nita's perspective, because I would really like to know what was going through Kit's head when they found out about the sacrifice.

The fact that Ed took Nita's place doesn't invalidate either choice (my brain went off on a tangent here about Ed and trickster archetypes - not quite sure if there's anything relevant in that). Death, for Ed, after all this time, is in some way a victory, or an escape - "an ancient creature drenched in the blood of innocents"... Um. Ok, brain things definitely happening there. Moving on.

Nita and Donna are both faced with a choice between, essentially, death and forgetting, and both choose death, but neither is allowed to actually die. The difference is that Ed's willing substitution means that Nita does not forget - and it doesn't feel like a cop out because she was still trying to make the sacrifice even without magic, until Ed knocked the air from her lungs. Donna is also prevented from dying by force, but ends up forgetting anyway.

Also - a quibble with your terminology - the problem is not that she thinks she is normal, it's that she thinks she is nothing special. Your friend says that Donna was happy in her life before the Doctor, but that's not true: over and over throughout the season it's shown that although she puts up all of these barriers of bluntness and sass and confidence, in the end she still honestly believes that there is nothing special about her at all.

(A thought on that - it was only the half-Donna Doctor who realised that: the Doctor never got shown that it was more than rhetoric. He didn't understand what he was taking from her when he wiped her memory.)

I can't say, in all honesty, that I hate the S4 ending. What I just don't get is the people who don't see it as a tragedy, because it is tragic. Things are lost. Never mind that no-one actually dies, that doesn't stop it from being about the saddest season ending in new Who (ok, so I may be a bit biased here - but Rose lost a world and a life and a love, but she didn't lose knowledge of herself, and what she could be). Donna's appearances later, and her marriage and so on, they show that tragedies get lighter, even if they don't get better - ask anyone who's lost a loved one - but it doesn't mean that they don't happen.