Fandom:  Greek Mythology

Pairings:  Persephone/Hades

Spoilers:  Through Winter, but before Spring

Words:  ~ 4000

Xmas gift:  Owlsie the Owlboy


( Kore's Descent )

Finally, it's going to see the light of day! 

Okay, a bit of deconstruction.  I'm just going to quote liberarlly from Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality:

"The idea that the Cosmos is threatened with ruin if it is not annually re-created provides the inspiration for the chief festival of the Californian Karok, Hupa, and Yurok tribes.  In the respective languages the ceremony is called 'repair' or 'fixing' of the world, and, in English, 'New Year.'  Its purpose is to re-establish or strengthen the Earth for the following year.  Among some Yurok tribes the strengthening of the World is accomplished by ritually rebuilding the steam cabin, a rite that is cosmogonic in structure... and may be compared with the Shawnee ritual "The Cabin of New Life" (which forms part of the Sun Dance) and the "Big House" rituals of the Lenape.  In both cases we find a cosmogonic ritual, a renewal of the World and rebirth of Life...

"...The sacred cabin represents the Universe.  Its roof symbolizes the vault of heaven, the floor the Earth, the four walls the four directions of cosmic space.  The Dakotas say: 'the Year is a circle around the World,' that is, around the initiation cabin.  We may also add that the interdependence between the Cosmos and cosmic Time ('circular' Time) was so strongly felt that in several languages the term for 'World' is also used to mean 'Year.'"

So when I see a poster like this one, with a floating Cabin against a backdrop of (world) trees, this Whedon fangirl goes all squee.

Squeeee~!

Don't know what it is about this show, but it makes me very happy.

Part 2 of Wedding meta

it's got meta

and spoilers through the Wedding

So, um, what happened?
( Nothing happened, and it kept happening. Or everything happened all at once. )

More meta

More shenanigans

More mirroring



When the Doctor is telling Rory to go on and do some rewiring, he's doing double-duty. Triple-duty. He's calling attention to sciencey stuffs that make for the perfect metaphor. And what a wonderful show that can take an iconic action (cables and levers) and do something new with it!

THE DOCTOR: Reroute the blue into the red and the green into the blue, leave the red loose.

Leave the Red loose = leave Amy dangling.

Reroute the Blue into the Red = Amy becoming the Doctor.

The Green into the Blue = The Doctor becoming Rory?!!!  Sorry, reverse that polarity.

THE DOCTOR: It's not rocket science, it's Quantum Physics!

There's a branch of Quantum Physics called Quantum Chromodynamics, or QCD. QCD describes the charge of the strong interaction in quarks and gluons using the metaphor of color. This particular charge isn't so much positive or negate (a binary system) but rather can occupy one of three states, red, green or blue.  You can imagine the Strong Interaction as something like Gravity, or Magnetic Attraction.

In a composite particle (called a Hadron) of quarks, the a quark can change color by emitting a gluon; the gluon is absorbed by another quark, which in turn changes color, preserving the overall color charge of the hadron.

In other words, in quantum physics, particles exchange colors.





This is a metaphor for the strong interactions of the characters in Doctor Who.         

Amy becomes like the Doctor: builds a sonic, fights monsters and becomes like them, understands time-streams, even uses the same dialogue: Eyes front, Soldier.

Rory becomes like the Doctor: holding up a Looking Glass to examine the situation, wears special glasses so the Doctor can see through his eyes, fights monsters with art, goes into the terrible situation in order to save someone.

spoilers through

The Girl Who Waited

plus meta

and Rory!


( Come along, human child...  )

Meta

and

spoilers

through

The Girl Who Waited.


Two-Three Streams

There are several streams overlapping each other, and it's not apparently clear what's exactly happening. I think I understand it now, so I'll give it a go:

Stream One:  This is Amy One.  Amy waits 36 years for the Doctor and Rory to arrive, and they never showed up when she was young.  This is the stream we're watching all the way up until Rory presents Amy with a connection to her younger self via the Magnifying Glass.  The Magnifying Glass acts like a mirror, and mirrors are used to split laser beams into two, for, like, making holograms.

Stream Two: Amy Two occupies the stream which is internally self-consistent. Having received information from the future that she lived here thirt-six years, she chooses to act in accordance with Fate -- she is to wait.  This is Older Amy.

Stream Three: Amy Three now occupies the stream where the other choice is made, to violate fate by doing what's best for Rory, not what's internally consistent.  This is Young Amy. 

It's like the magnifying glass acted as a beam-splitter. Amy has literally been split in two, revealing two facets of her character at odds. It's a metaphor for her internal conflict, as well as the conflict she has about baby Melody.

Amy 2 must resolve the Amy 3's new decision in order to stay self-consistent. Her idea is to bring both streams into the TARDIS. However, the TARDIS won't accommodate both streams. Together they form a contradictory paradox. Amy can't have made both choices at the same time, only one side or the other can be let back out into the Universe.

The self-sacrificing Amy is Amy 3... she will sacrifice her self-consistency for the sake of Rory. Amy 2, because she's self-consistent, ends up sacrificing herself for the sake of Rory.


* * * * *


Older Amy's memory of refusing help is an altered memory, a rewritten memory, overwriting the memory of never having received help at all. It's a logically necessary memory for her to even exist, driven as much by reason as by her fear of death. If there isn't a part of Amy that would preserve her future self, her future self would have winked out of existence right there and then, I think.

Older Amy is thinking as a time-traveler, understanding the consequences of creating a paradox -- she knows that going down the road of rewriting time can unravel the Universe. She owns the motivation to avoid paradox as well as to continue being. And remember, this is "serious Amy," who hasn't laughed, keeps a strict schedule, and calls it like she sees it... because that's what it takes to survive. Amy has a grim side to her.

She remembers when she refused to assist in her own escape because that's what *must* have happened for her to still be there thirty-six years later, given the initial failure of the Doctor to get there "on time." And there is a part of Amy who appreciates the sort of person she must ultimately be to survive on her own for thirty-six years, who appreciates this future version of herself... who accepts both herself and Fate.


And then there's the part of Amy that doesn't accept fate, because her love for Rory is stronger than her fear of death or paradox. So she rewrites herself again -- younger Amy rewrites older Amy, getting her to realize that Rory is more important than causality. I think it's here that I found some clarity regarding Older Amy's motivation, the importance she placed on paradox aversion.


In a sense, Amy's two selves are a reflection of the Doctor. The part of her that would refuse to alter time and space to avoid her own suffering, out of respect for the fabric of the Universe, that's the same side of the Doctor that closes the door. The part of her that would sacrifice herself and damn the consequences to time and space is the same side of the Doctor that shows up in tails to dance for River Song.

This goes back to what goldenmoonrose said about the duality of Angel and Beast.  Older Amy is the Beast, the part of Amy that fights monsters, understands time and causality and sonics, and who is very good at surviving.  Younger Amy is the Angel, who self-sacrifices out of Love, and who can *tame* the Beast within, who realizes she doesn't have to "torture the pilot," as she put it back in The Beast Below.

Spoilers for The Girl Who Waited

This is meta.

And sciencey stuffs, not exactly character stuffs, but it's applicable.  Really!

It helps make sense of the whole underlying concept, all the mirroring and duplicates and what have you.

So.

You're warned.


In The Girl Who Waited, Rory is left waiting amidst the statues and a Gate while The Doctor and Amy (the two geniuses) have a chat. He gets curious.

RORY: How can you have a door without a wall?

Rory tries to walk behind the door, and smack his head into an invisible wall, a discovery that he is in an illusory reality, but in reverse: There's something solid there, not the empty space he was expecting. "Holographic wallpaper," he says. And then he's touched by a hand-bot, and an anaesthetized Rory collapses.





To make a hologram, the subject of the hologram is cast in the light of one laser (fixed wavelength) -- the reflection of which is captured by the recording media, while a second beam is split off from the first and directed at the same media but from a different angle. What's recorded is the interference pattern between the object beam and the reference beam -- two streams of light.

Once recorded, the holograph has an unusual property: if you split the holographic plate in two, the image doesn't split in two... rather, the image becomes double, one on each side of the break. Break the plate into a dozen pieces, and you get a dozen miniatures of the original. Every part has the information of the whole.




London physicist David Bohm noted the similarity between holography and quantum physics. Some of the findings of quantum physics suggests that the Universe does not physically exist, that it is a phantasm, and more properly a gigantic hologram. At a deeper level of reality, what we think of as separate particles are not really separate, but partake of the same "fundamental something" of the Universe.

It's a principle explained by the Doctor in the Big Bang: Every particle of the Universe contains a reflection of every other particle of the Universe.  That's how the Pandorica could function as a source for restoration, how it could "remember" the Universe. It's the underlying superholograph of the Universe that gives birth to "being", to our perception of the phenomenal world, which is an illusion -- the Universe is more properly "information."

Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram speculates that our memories and possibly our imaginations work through some kind of holography -- the interference patterns of neurological activity across fine fiber branches of dendrites that act as a holographic web in the brain.





After the Voice Interface of Two Streams presents Amy with a holographic image of the world, she's touched by a hand-bot, and an anaesthetized Amy collapses.

My first fic
Spoilers through The Girl Who Waited
Amy / Rory-bot


A Girl, Waiting
 
 
You have a stupid face.  Yes, a stupid face.  Rory, why is your face so stupid? 
 
Why I am talking to a robot?  Again?
 
I made his face.  I put that face on his stupid face.  It’s not his face.  It’s my face.  My stupid face.
 
Doctor, I can’t wait anymore.  I can’t, I just can’t.  Every day is the same.  At 2:23, I go out to the garden.  I find something to eat.  Not that I’m hungry, I just feel like eating.  I eat leaves.  And flower petals.  You told me once about the Aplans, how they would sit in their caves and eat leaves from the Lote Tree.  Forty-two days for initiation.  Two at a time.  One for each head.  I wish I had two heads.  Better than talking to a stupid robot.
 
Rory, come here.
 
At 4:16, I go to the aquarium.  I have fifteen minutes to look at the fish.  I could have some fish.  It’d be easy enough.  Probe the glass with my sonic, make cracks, let the water rush out all over the floor.  They’d flop and thrash, and then they’d be dead.  And I’d have fish.  Plenty enough to eat.  But I don’t.  I can’t. 
 
Rory, kneel.
 
I never go to the cinema anymore.  It’s not that the feature keeps getting interrupted.  I can deal with that.  It’s that I can’t hold your hand during the scary bits.  Or the sad bits.  Even if I saw the end, what would be the point in that?  It’s not like we can go to the pub afterwards.  You’d think a place that gives you so much to explore would have some decent chips.  You’d be wrong.  But you’re always wrong, aren’t you?  Coming here was a mistake.  Pressing that button, a mistake.  You’re a mistake.  You’re a bloody stupid mistake.
 
No, not you Rory.  Come closer.  There.
 
You think you’re so smart, but you’re not.  No, you’re not.  My sonic probe has two heads.  Two heads, you hear me?  I remember.  I remember when you said that you’d come for me, that I’d be safe.  Safe.  Sure, I’m safe.  I’m safe, but not because of you.  I’m safe because of me.  I knew where to hide, all on my own.  I knew how to work the Voice Interface, and I had her teach me.  Teach me how to survive.  How to put together my own tools. My own armor.  I take it from their bodies.  They don’t miss it.  They keep coming, they keep coming, every night they keep coming and they want to hurt me but I don’t let them, because I’m smart. 
 
Rory, give me your face, now.
 
I have one hundred and eight minutes... had one hundred and eight minutes, before they come again.  I’m not going to squander it.  Not again.  Not on you. 
 
Freeze!  Rory freeze.
 
When I was a girl, I got lost.  I got lost in a blank place, a place where your dreams come true, and where they never come true.  I made a choice.  I made a choice to go the Garden, and this is where it got me.  It got me someplace safe.  This is my safe place.  Behind the engines.  The time engines.  Is that why you keep gallavanting?  Because it makes you feel safe?  You think you can just run away?  You can’t.  You can’t, because it’s always with you, this burning inside, boiling your blood, you think you can make it however you want, but that’s a lie.  It’s a lie, because I’ve seen the truth.  You can’t escape. You can’t escape fate.  What happened happened.  You can’t change it.  And you shouldn’t. 
 
Rory!  I wish you had hands.
 
Because this is how it is.  How it must be.  I call it like I see it, and I like what I see.  The little girl grew up, Doctor.  She became strong.  A warrior.  Doesn’t that make you sick?  Knowing that I stand for everything you hate?  You can’t change it... well, you can, but that’s what makes you a monster.  Yes, a monster.  I hate you.  You can’t accept...
 
Stop, Rory.  Stop!  Right there.  Stop...
 
You know what She would say?  Yes, Her.  The one you don’t want to talk about.  We all know it.  You know it.  I know it, but we don’t say anything, we don’t say anything at all, do we?  Because you can’t face the truth.  There’s nothing you can do.  You say you can change time, but you can’t.  You can’t.  So what good are you?  What, just show us and leave it at that?  No.  It can’t, it just can’t.  I can’t go on like this.  It has to change.  She... I just can’t.  You let me... damn you.  We can do it.  We can do it.  It doesn’t... She... Oh!
 
Oh!  Oh Rory.  Rory Rory.  What have I done to you?  What happened to your face?
 
I can fix this.  I can fix it.  Now where did I put my magic marker?