Sound familiar?

Puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy, used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young; psychologically it is an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level. The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.<sup>[1]

Notes:
^ Sharp, p. 109

Sharp, Daryl. Jung Lexicon: A Primer of Terms & Concepts. (pp 109 – 110). Inner City Books, Toronto, 1991. ISBN 0-919123-48-1

We have MANY MANY other books to purchase and or take out from the library aside from the over a dozen we currently already have and most likely WILL be using for this paper.   The subject of the puer aeternus is pretty pivitol not only for our comparisons of Eleven and Peter, whom is the poster child for the archetype,  but may explain to a degree Moffat's intentional plans for the character and how the personality change and his relationship to Amy correlates to real world issues with young adults and teenagers today moreso than ever before in the show's history.

A late-nite tidbit for the brain to nosh on. Talk again real soon! 

- Max</sup> 

Selections of How Jen and Max Work...

In the interest of full disclosure, THIS is what we're dealing with here.

12:08 AM Jen: DOCTAH

12:09 AM Max: WHAT

12:10 AM Jen: I'm picking a background for our blog

 Max: omgggg  :3

12:11 AM Jen: sooo... this is you and me on a daily basis

  http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6p8agmAz51rzxwr9o1_500.gif

12:16 AM Max: Uh pretty much

  it's either me or you doing the waving and the other doing the shaking

12:17 AM Jen: yep

Where It All Started

Hi all, this is Max! Jen has already introduced our paper rather effectively, I don't want to repeat much but I will say I hope people will join and follow us as we work. As stated, we are so excited and would love people to come view and track our progress with us from here to Orlando!

I thought to introduce myself, I'd share and present some basic thoughts we had at the very beginning of this process; what actually sent us into motion. Essentially, how we got here! As our paper title and blog name and snazzy wallpaper suggests, yes our paper is indeed about the parallelism between the relationships of the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond in the television show Doctor Who and that of J.M. Barrie's titular characters from Peter and Wendy and all it's various original canon incarnations.  We then, accordingly, will be looking at the psychological and sociological implications of those similarities in regards to pop culture and the show's current audience and demographics.

Our first original thought all the way back in May, was to focus upon the central topic of fairy tales and fairy tale conventions that Steven Moffat, upon given helm to the television series, was able to adapt and weave into and alongside the expected sci-fi elements of the series, creating a show with quite a different tone and feel than it was more or less under the helm of Russell T Davies who had preceded him as showrunner. However, revisiting Moffat's older single episodes as a writer during that previous era, such as Girl In The Fireplace (Madame Du Pompadour is a prototypal Amy and many elements of this episode are repeated in full in Series 5) reveal a more fairy tale influenced sensibility from the start.

However, as we dug into those recurring motifs and patterns and unraveled the Eleventh Doctor's new deceivingly youthful and puckish but also at times extremely chaotic and scary behavior and Amy's centrality to the "Bit fairy tale" theme and her relationship with The Doctor across her three starring seasons, it became much clearer that Moffat, via Eleven and Amy, was playing not just with fairy tales but specifically working with an adaptation of Peter Pan! And that is where our concept truly started to take shape. 

I have much more to say, but I thought this is a good place to end for now.

 Talk to everyone again real soon!

~ Max 

The Purpose of the Blog

Hello readers!
Welcome to the blog of Max and Jen. We are working on a paper that we will be presenting at the ICFA, the Conference for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. The conference is this March in Orlando and we are so excited that we are already counting down the days!

The paper we are writing is titled "Come Along Pond...Off to Neverland: How the Doctor Has Turned into the Boy Who Won't Grow Up, and What it Means Within our Popular Culture". This blog is going to serve two-fold; it will not only allow us to collect our thoughts and serve as a document which tracks our progress, but it will also allow anyone interested in our process or our findings to follow along as we go!

We will do our best to keep the information organized with dates and specific links and/or references, so you can understand where our research is coming from, and how we are executing it. Please feel free to leave questions/comments/arguments/agreements in the comments section and we will respond as soon as we see them.

Thanks in advance for your interest and support in this project. Both Max and I are so incredibly excited for this paper and presentation that we can barely contain ourselves!

More updates soon!

--Jen