Anthony Ainley is someone I have two days of mourning for: The day he died, May 3rd, and the actual announcement of his death 1 week later, May 10th, because that is the day I felt all the pain and sorrow that will never truly go away (considering it irreversibly altered my brain, and made worse by how the people who were supposed to be looking out for my well-being didn't understand enough to care). The time from that day in 2004 through early 2008 (when the next era of my life began) was one of the most painful eras of my life rivaled only by... well, now, but my point is during that time I couldn't enjoy anything, even the stuff that at my core I knew I did, because of the pain and emptiness inside me. And one of these things was the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, which proved wrong all my misgivings which were unfortunately one of the last things I wrote to Anthony about, so I never got to apologize and admit I was wrong. So I watched despite the pain, the knowledge he will never see it, never get to read my reactions, never get to be fannish together. Many of the events of the seasons from that time period did not help either. This is my long-winded way of explaining why I chose a song from the revival for this video, even though using music from after he died feels wrong, like physically uncomfortable (same when I did it for those failed dance meme videos). I heard it in another Doctor Who video and I realized it worked, even though it would be painful to work with.
So I hope all of you like this. I only used clips from works I watched when he was still alive. I have found many more over the past 20 years (mostly online because a lot of his stuff didn't make it to R1 DVD when that was still the main format), but those are always bittersweet to watch. They all are now, really.
As I said before I've been meaning to do another talking video about him, this time more about the loss, the grief, and more about how it affected how reality "felt" from then on, but I my brain is still not good at saying or even writing down something that needs a lot of thought like that. I don't know why but the fact that I'm uploading this at 5:22 am might have something to do with it. 😑 Hopefully by the end of the month I will be mentally and emotionally ready to make it.
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