#Cordi's Facts

[whimsyc0tt]

Pokemon Fact of the Day: Rabsca

Rabsca is actually one of the many Pokemon we know way too little about! Evolution of Rellor is relatively rare, and the behavior of Rabsca often leaves Pokemon Researches confused. It is a frequent debate whether the ball the Rabsca holds is an infant Rellor or the real body of the Rabsca itself, controlling the faux-body like an external brain. There is evidence to suggest either!

[sassycordy]

they (somehow) survived the great war but couldn’t escape the homophobic 2000s :/

audio credits: remyhvdley (yt)

[veilkeeper]

corentin's a joyous and true vers but if you ask macen to bottom he'll kill you

[someonefantastic]

Whumptober 2022 Masterlist

31 days. Four fandoms. A multitude of angsty fics written for Whumptober 2022. Let's get this show on the road, folks!

Fics written for Psych (2), Six the Musical (2), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (4), and Angel: the Series (23). They're all sorted into fandom categories beneath the cut.

Psych

start at the beginning

Day 4: Dead on Your Feet

Summary: Juliet knew it was a bad idea to go into the woods with Shawn on an investigation. She's not exactly happy that she was right either. Prompt: Dead on Your Feet, Hidden Injury, Can’t Pass Out Warnings: blood, injury, worry, drug mention ao3

Day 12: What Could Go Wrong?

Summary: Shawn, Gus, Juliet, and Lassiter are investigating a murderer's suspected hideout. What could go wrong? Prompts: What Could Go Wrong?, Cave In Warnings: (ignore if you don't want spoilers) general icky houseness, claustrophobia, blood, injury, rusty nails, cave in, earthquake ao3

Six the Musical

start at the beginning

Day 8: Everything Hurts and I’m Dying

Summary: The funny thing about dying and then undying is that sometimes your body forgets that you’re fine. Prompts: Everything Hurts and I’m Dying. Stomach Pain, Head Trauma (sorta), Back From the Dead Warnings: Body horror, blood, implied suicide attempt, cancer, beheading, childbirth/death, heart attack, CSA, dark themes, dark memories ao3

Day 19: Enough Is Enough

Summary: She can feel their hands everywhere. She can't escape them. Prompts: Enough Is Enough, Knees Buckling, Repeatedly Passing Out, Head Lolling (they're all kinda there, woven throughout, it may not be super obvert though) Warnings: Literally the entirety of Katherine's story (for newcomers, a lot of CSA and SA) ao3

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

start at the beginning

Day 3: A Hair’s Breadth From Death

Summary: Cordelia is terrified that she'll find Xander blooded and broken in the basement of the abandoned factory, but what she finds when she gets there is far, far worse. Prompt: Impaled Warnings: Blood, injury, cheating, breakup ao3

Day 10: Poor Unfortunate Souls

Summary: Angelus knows exactly how he will use Buffy's friends to get to her. Prompt: Poor Unfortunate Souls Warnings: Angelus, lots of death/murder talk (no one actually dies), implied rape, implied torture, (none of it actually happens but it's still talked about) ao3

Day 17: Hanging by a Threat

Summary: Immediately after rescuing Cordelia from Marcie, Buffy learns a little bit more about the newly crowned May Queen. Prompts: Breaking Point, Reluctant Caretaker Warnings: Blood, panic attack ao3

Day 27: Pushed to the Limit

Summary: Post-Series. Buffy and Dawn are adjusting to life after the Hellmouth, though Dawn's newfound key powers are certainly taking some getting used to. Prompts: Pushed to the Limit, Magical Exhaustion ao3

Angel: the Series

start at the beginning

Day 1: A Little Out of the Ordinary

Summary: Angel knew the consequences of vamping out in Pylea but nothing could change the reality of what happens when his demon take control. Prompt: Adverse Effects, Unconventional Restraints, “This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen” Warnings: Body horror, blood, injuries, violence, dark thoughts ao3

Day 2: Nowhere to Run

Summary: (S4 AU) Cordelia hates the fact that Angelus is back, not just because of the circumstances surrounding his need to return but also because the man she loves is now without a soul. Prompts: Nowhere to Run, Cornered (metaphorically), Caged, Confrontation Warnings: general warning for Angelus being Angelus, i.e. lewd comments, manipulation, etc. ao3

Day 5: Every Whumpee’s Needs

Summary: When Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley get trapped in a mystical box, they quickly discover that it's not the box itself they should be worried about. Prompt: Running Out of Air Warnings: Blood, broken bones, loss of oxygen, canonical death mentions ao3

Day 6: Proof of Life

Summary: (Set during "To Shanshu in LA") Angel hasn't stopped running from the moment he got a phone call from the hospital. All he knows is that he needs to get to Cordelia and fast. Prompts: Proof of Life, Screams From Across the Hall Warnings: Hospitals, worry, seizure like reactions? Idk how to describe Cordy's vision overloading but if you've seen the show you know what I mean ao3

Day 7: The Way You Shake and Shiver

Summary: Cordelia has a vision. Prompts: The Way You Shake and Shiver, Shaking Hands, Seizures (kinda), Silent Panic Attack (kinda) Warnings: Blood, dark thoughts, death mentions, characters thinking they're gonna/wanting to die (briefly), general vision pain ao3

Day 9: The Very Noisy Night

Summary: After the events of To Shanshu in LA, Cordelia has nightmares about the people she saw but couldn't save. Prompts: The Very Noisy Night, Sleeping in Shifts (implied), Tossing and Turning (implied) Warnings: Nightmares, drowning ao3

Day 11: “911, What’s Your Emergency?”

Summary: Cordelia gets hurt fighting a demon and it's up to Angel to patch her up. Prompts: “911, What’s Your Emergency?”, Sloppy Bandages (sorta), Self-Done First Aid (sorta) Warnings: blood, injury, stitches and needles (both are mentioned but not really focused on) ao3

Day 13: Can’t Make an Omelette Without Breaking a Few Legs

Summary: (Post-Not Fade Away) Angel is bleeding, broken, and newly human and all he can think about is how he wishes Cordelia was with him. Prompts: Can’t Make an Omelette Without Breaking a Few Legs, Dislocation Warnings: Overstimulation, hypersensitivity, broken bones, bleeding, hallucinations, mentions of canonical character death, begging/pleading ao3

Day 14: Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to Become a Villain

Summary: Cordelia and Angel are finally together and Cordy isn't sure that she's ever been happier. Prompts: Die a Hero or Live Long Enough to Become a Villain, Failed Escape (sorta, kinda) Warnings: I don't think there's anything really for this but lmk if there is anything I should include ao3

Day 15: Emotional Damage

Summary: Cordelia gets her first vision after the events of "That Vision Thing" and is hit by the reality of her life. Prompts: Emotional Damage, Lies, New Scars, Breathing Through the Pain (presumed) Warnings: Small suicidal thought allusion, mentions of throwing up, otherwise nothing that I can think of that wasn't part of TVT

Day 16: No Way Out

Summary: Cordelia can feel it inside of her. Moving about, using her, controlling her. AKA some of Cordelia's thoughts during the mess that is s4. Prompts: No Way Out, No One’s Coming. Warnings: Possession, body horror, Jasmine inside of Cordelia's body (aka Jordy), creepy pregnancy, hopelessness ao3

Day 18: Let’s Break the Ice

Summary: With Angel gone, it's up to Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn to fight whatever demons arise. However, when it comes to fighting the Fred's demons, it's a lot harder. Prompts: Let’s Break the Ice, “Just Get It Over With.” Warnings: PTSD, mentions of being enslaved and allusions to abuse ao3

Day 20: It’s Been a Long Day

Summary: In Pylea, Cordelia's "curse" is put to the test. Prompts: Going Into Shock, Fetal Position Warnings: Uh, not really other than vision torture I guess?

Day 21: Famous Last Words

Summary: Cordelia will never be able to forget the horrors of what she experienced in "Expecting". Prompts: Coughing Puking up Blood, “You’re Safe Now.” Warnings: Vomit, blood (both are not super focused on), and allusions to rape and general warning for everything that happened in this ep ao3

Day 22: Pick Your Poison

Summary: Cordelia enlists Wesley's help to find Angel, who is trapped at the bottom of the ocean. Prompts: Withdrawal (kinda) Warnings: Blood, Justine ao3

Day 23: At the End of Their Rope

Summary: Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn are having a really bad day. Prompts: At the End of Their Rope, Forced to Kneel, “Hold Them Down.” Warnings: Slight blood and injury ao3

Day 24: Fight, Flight or Freeze

Summary: During "Inside Out" Cordelia wakes up. Prompts: Blood Covered Hands, Catatonic (kinda), “I Don’t Want to Do This Anymore.” Warnings: Forced birth, labor, creepy/unwanted pregnancy, blood, possession, brief mentions of the s4 Connor stuff, allusions to suicide/murder, dark themes overall ao3

Day 25: Silence Is Golden

Summary: One of the Angel Investigations team members loses something pretty important. Prompts: Lost Voice Warnings: None really that I can think of but let me know if there's any I should tag ao3

Day 26: No One Left Behind

Summary: Cordelia in an alley on a cold, rainy night. Prompts: “Why Did You Save Me?” Warnings: Blood, blood drinking (from vampires), violence ao3

Day 28: It’s Just the Tip of the Iceberg

Summary: Connor is gone and Angel is drowning in grief and lack of self preservation. Prompts: It’s Just the Tip of the Iceberg, Anger Born of Worry, Punching the Wall Warnings: Grief, Anger, Discussion of Drinking Connor's Blood ao3

Day 29: What Doesn’t Kill Me…

Summary: Sleep deprivation and brain destroying visions aren't exactly a good mix. Prompts: What Doesn’t Kill Me…, Sleep Deprivation, Defiance Warnings: Body horror, blood, demon descriptions, very brief child endangerment ao3

Day 30: “Please Don’t Touch Me.”

Summary: (AU) Cordelia wakes up from her coma for real, restarts Angel Investigations with Spike and Gunn and starts dating Angel. But even a new start doesn't stop the reality of what happened with Jasmine. Especially not when Connor comes back into the picture. Prompt: “Please Don’t Touch Me.” Warnings: Sexual Trauma, Implied/Referenced Non-Con, Very Brief Descriptions of Sex, Trauma, Panic Attacks, You know s4 and the horridness that is Cordy and Connor with Jasmine in Cordy's body? Yeah this fic is about that. ao3

Day 31: A Light at the End of the Tunnel

Summary: Four times Cordelia finds herself in a hospital. Prompts: Comfort, Bedside Vigil Warnings: Hospitals, blood and injury ao3

[forcebookish]

i cannot emphasize enough how much better this scene and their dynamic, and xander's dynamic with literally everyone on the show, would be if this weren't the case lol

i swear, xander's sliding likability scale is directly correlated to whether or not he's "in love" (read: obsessed) with buffy. his lack of it may be the only thing that makes him tolerable in later seasons.

his hatred of angel, when he's evil or not, being the result of jealousy is so lazy! it's a bad reason! it makes him look petty and small! unable to forgive angel for spending a hundred years wreaking havoc on the world? interesting! says something specific about his personality other than "buffy hot" and "annoying teenage boy." he SAYS that he's always thought of him as a monster and that all vampires are bad, period, but there's no substance to it. it's always framed as wah wah jealousy. cordy was right: "scratch the surface and what do you find? more surface."

why can't xander just be a good friend? why does he have to carry this torch for her? WHILE he's dating another girl, who he has mostly disdain for? am i supposed to be endeared because of this? in whAT UNIVERSE???!?

[nicnacsnonsense]

Cordelia: You know what I think? I think [Angel] uses his tortured creature of the night status as a license to be rude and insensitive.

Yessss Cordy, girl, drag him

[angel-thoughts-dump]

Cordy's 'you can't change a person, but you can change fate', VS Wesley's 'a person can change, but you can't change fate' VS Angel's 'if I don't change both I don't deserve to live'

[crownedhopelesss]

i hope ALL OF YOU know i WILL be adding Indira to @sunnydalescoobiies and adding verses for most of my muses from this audiobook. the level of self control i have is nonexistent and i will not be stopped 😈

[dawnssummers]

ok the thing about buffy with kendra and then faith is that there's only meant to be one and the fact that there are two in both cases makes buffy less alone only like the way she had to die to get that . and for the next few seasons a part of buffy will still see her death as her own failure/lack of readiness because as much as she was prepared to die facing the master she was scared and then he THRALLED her and dumped her in a PUDDLE (as opposed to the gift where she more or less chooses her own death). and then with faith in s3 it's like. she is there all the time and a constant reminder of buffy and then kendra being powerless and dying and buffy couldnt save herself couldnt save kendra and yet here is faith and they are the same and how is that even fair that the universe gave her faith but took away so much to get her and buffy cannot help being drawn to faith it's a lot. gay people u know

[whimsyc0tt]

☕ !!!

( @jotabug )

Oh Jota you're my hero thank you for letting me rant

Pokedex entries are based on a lot of sources but not all of them are scientific research. After all, Pokedexes are a collection of personal data from trainers starting at the age of 10 or older! This is why Pokedex entries are so varied and often contradictory. There's urban legends, personal stories, rumors, hypothesies, and actual scientific data all rolled up into one. I wish I could get my sticky little hands on the Pokedex and revamp it so it has ACTUAL facts and then, underneath that, all the things that have not been verified. However, I (or anyone) can't do that, because the world of Pokemon is so vast and still undiscovered that our data is always expanding, changing, or nixed altogether!

All in all, take a lot of the Pokedex entries with a small grain of salt. For example, Hattrems (not Hattrenes! That's a common mistake) are super in-tune with human emotions, and there has been examples of Hattrems attacking someone showing strong emotion. However, are they guaranteed to do that? No! Actually, it happens because Hattrems are very sensitive to emotion and sound, and get overwhelmed and lash out as a coping mechanism!

Oh my god Hattrems have autism I need a Hattrem

[cobra-creampuff]

the fact that every significant woman in angel's life has called him "puppy". hm.

[clumsycapitolunicorn]

.

[someonefantastic]

“Why We Fight” is the thirteen episode of Angel season 5. The episode itself is rather forgettable in it’s entirety however it is known as the one where Angel is recruited by the US Government during World War II. The title itself is an allusion to the series of seven propaganda films issued by the US Department of War from 1942 to 1945 during World War II--which lines up with the plotline within the episode. However, that that bit of information is not common knowledge for most people (including myself until recently) as clever as a title as that may be, it takes on a completely different context when you consider the show as a whole.

When you look at the series in its entirety, the central, driving plotline is this idea of a mission to help the helpless. This mission has been referenced several times in season 5 alone, particularly in regards to the joining of Wolfram & Hart which is seen by some as a betrayal of the mission whilst to others it is an altering of means to achieve this mission. "Why We Fight” falls directly after “You’re Welcome” AKA the episode where Cordelia Chase has her final send off and the episode ends with an phone call regarding her death. Cordelia’s archetype within the show and the Angel Investigations team, is that of the heart. It’s something that is even brought up within the show’s canon as pointed out by Fred in “Fredless”. She is also the main executor of the “mission”. She is the one who founded Angel Investigations in “City Of...” and she is the one who stuck with the mission and continuously tried to keep Angel focused on the mission. (Three notable, but very different examples, of this is the Beige!Angel arch in season 2, “Heartthrob”, and “Provider”.) She is also the one to receive the visions AKA messages from the Powers that Be about the mission. It is fair to say that Cordelia and the mission are linked to one another and that without one it is hard to have the other. This in particular is supported by the fact that after Cordelia falls into a coma, Angel and the rest of the Angel Investigations team join Wolfram & Hart, thus shifting the mission and their priorities.

When you consider all of this, the placement of “Why We Fight” after “You’re Welcome” winds up falling short. Titling an episode “Why We Fight” may be a clever allusion to a series of propaganda that would make sense within the realm of the episode, however, within the wider context of the show itself it shifts from a simple reference to a title that doesn’t make much sense on its own and frankly causes the episode itself to feel disappointing. An episode titled “Why We Fight” following Cordelia--the heart and the biggest supporter of the mission--’s departure has the potential to really capture Angel’s struggle to answer the question of why he is fighting anymore when the heart and the mission appears to be gone. (Not to mention it would have been nice to see the characters of this show actually mourn a character that was so integral to the foundation of the show.) It could have been used as a reminder to both Angel and the audience that there is still always a reason to keep fighting, to keep going. It even could have been used as a way to reiterate the idea brought up in “Epiphany” that “if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do” and re-contextualize that within the world that Angel and the rest of the team is working in. In a season where Angel and everyone else just feels so lost and that central theme of the “mission” is harder to be found, an episode titled “Why We Fight” could be a great way to ground the show and give both the characters and the audience a different way of viewing the events of season 5.

But instead the title "Why We Fight” was a reference to a piece of US Propaganda that most people aren’t aware of and out of the episode we got another one-off tortured childe Angel sired, Angel working for the US Military, and Spike eating a nazi (the best part tbh)

[chasingfictions]

late s3 coffy is so crazy bc at first glance theyre like wow we are simply not going to let these girls interact after helpless because buffy is really busy with her other brunette shadow self right now but in fact cordy's whole pursuit of wesley is like.

okay you've been obsessed with a girl since she moved here three years ago and you wanted to be her best friend but she chose the freaks and weirdos over you. so you mock her for being a freak and a weirdo but in this way where you're always going out of your way to do it, and you always have this baseline awareness and jealousy of her, you are always trying to date the boys she dates, but it's just regular popular girl-weird girl antics right? it's just regular popular girl-weird girl she hates antics to go to her when you're afraid for your life, put your safety in her hands, and tell her i know you share this feeling we have for each other, deep down. and the week after that you become unwittingly aware of her secret identity and it makes sense to you so quickly, you enfold yourself into her world with such ease. but you're still not allowed to be friends with her. you start dating one of her weirdo freak friends though, and admit to yourself later on that you only dated him because of his link to buffy. you detach yourself from your popular girl friends and become totally ensconced in this girl's friend group, you're one of them now, you've thrown in your lot with her. but she still doesn't like you, and you don't like her, but not because you actually even necessarily dislike each other. i know you share this feeling we have for each other, deep down. but your personas are people who don't get along, because you're the popular girl and she's the weird girl. even though you're not popular anymore. even though you're just as weird as her now. even though she was popular too, at her old school. even though you hang out all the time. even though you're dating her best friend. you're still not friends, you're just people who can't stop insulting each other. and then her best friend cheats on you with the other best friend. and the girl tries to make amends with you, tries to tell you she can be there for you, that you're allowed to be friends, for real, you don't need the guise of dating her best friend for you guys to hang out. i know you share this feeling we have for each other, deep down. but you're so angry at her, because she's the reason you became weird in the first place, if she had never moved to town, you would never be like this, you would have everything you used to have, and she did all of this to you, and did it all without even liking you that much, and you didn't like her that much either, except you do, of course, and she likes you. but you guys can't say that to each other at the same time. there always has to be one of you pulling away. even though i know you share this feeling we have for each other, deep down.

and now you don't have a link to her anymore. you're not dating her friend. you've rejected her offer to be friends despite that. but you can't just ... not see each other. right? so you still hang around, to insult her, to trade barbs, to call her a freak, and even though you'll never gain back what you had before she made you lose it, it's okay, because she's still the weird one. not you. even though you still only talk to the weirdos. that's okay though. that's okay, because you still see her sometimes. i know you share this feeling we have for each other, deep down. and then when she's at her weakest, you're there for her, and you protect her, and she's always protected you, and now for one second, for the very first time, you are on equal footing.

and that doesn't mean you have a place in her life. you still don't see one for yourself. trying to be friends is too scary. and she has a whole new girl she's being antagonistic with now. but luckily, her new watcher moves to town just after this happens. so you attach yourself to him, so you can have a reason to stay in the girl's orbit. you're always around, but it's not about her. maybe it could be, but it's not, you just like her watcher, that's all. see, you're not even talking to her. you're just trying to form an emotional bond with the person who, as far as you know from the only other watcher she's ever had, is going to be a huge figure in her life from here on out. and you don't talk about it, but that's okay. because i know you share this feeling we have for each other, deep down.

and then you can't bear to stay in the town where she lives anymore but you also can't bear to not have anything to do with her so even though you don't talk anymore, you move to her hometown, and end up working side by side with her ex boyfriend and that same ex watcher and fighting demons just like she does, forever, for the rest of your life

[sam-keeper]

Susan Twist: Word Lord?

Many* people** are wondering about the theory held by certain Doctor Who fans*** online that the actress Susan Twist in the new season of the long running franchise is playing what's known as a "Word Lord".

Now, granted, many more are wondering whether she might, in fact, be Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter. That, my friends, is exactly the kind of question a Word Lord would want you to be asking.

Lemme break this theory down for you.

Throughout this whole new season of Doctor Who, the protagonists have been haunted by the recurrence, in different roles, of a stage and character actor who happens to have the delightful name Susan Twist. Like, not in the show, in real life. According to Russel T Davies, she was the only actor they could get due to an "actor shortage", which seems like a pretty terrible and even implausible dilemma, but luckily Davies has made lemonade out of this very real production constraint! Twist popped up in every episode this season, in some form or other. That's versatile writing! No wonder they brought Rusty back as showrunner.

But perhaps there's more to the story than just the unfortunate realities of filming in a country ruled by a failed regime...

The Doctor and his companion Ruby started noticing Twist's recurring roles over the past few episodes, though the plot of each episode intervened before they could put anything definitive together. It's one of a number of nods to the metatextual content of the show--literal winks to the audience, another character (Mrs Flood) directly addressing the viewers, a whole musical number about how there's "always a twist at the end"--that suggested maybe some authorial tomfoolery was afoot, that maybe something a little tricky or tongue in cheek was happening.

But what could the explanation be? Could Susan Twist really be playing THE Susan, a relative of the Doctor's that hasn't been seen in the franchise since the 60s? That seems a little silly, surely! Or could she be playing another character, like... the Rani? or the Monk? Both of them got namedropped alongside Susan at one point. Or maybe she's the portended head of Maestro and the Toymaker's extracosmic family. I guess there's a theory this is Sutekh, the evil alien god from Pyramids of Mars? Sure, seems fun.

But no. Fuck all that noise. I know what's really going on here and it just coincidentally involves a character that I'm feral about, and that no one else has even heard of, a guy called, somewhat fittingly, Nobody No-one.

No-one shows up in just one and a quarter stories by Steven Hall for Big Finish's series of audio dramas, first as a minor opponent (in 45) and then as a much more motivated and fearsome one (in A Death in the Family). In the latter story, he manages to--no points if you worked this out from the title--kill the Seventh Doctor. How did a character with such a low profile manage such a feat? Well, Nobody No-one has powers comparable to a Time Lord: he is a Word Lord.

Word Lords are one of the most delightfully bonkers concepts to come out of the early exciting and experimental period in Big Finish's line of audio dramas. Hailing from another universe, they're the equivalent of Time Lords for a reality where narrative rather than chronology drives all existence. It's like if the Anchoring of the Thread established not linear time but, I guess, TV Tropes instead. Nobody No-one regenerates like the Doctor, and has his own equivalent to the TARDIS: the CORDIS, or Conveyance Of Repeating Dialogue In Space-time, which is a memetic construct transporting the Word Lord through repeated phrases, jokes, coincidental number recurrences, and so on. The CORDIS is heralded by the number 45 popping up, and you'd better believe I sat up and noticed how many times that number recurred in the code pattern in Dot and Bubble! In Death in the Family there's a whole military organization the Doctor's mucking around with--No, not UNIT. No, not Torchwood. A different thing, one run by a human supremacist vampire hold on we're getting off topic--and Nobody casually reveals at one point that his CORDIS was bouncing around inside their "For King And Country" mantra for years.

Nobody No-one's real fun as a villain comes from his special Bullshit Powers. He's a Word Lord, so he's basically a memetic being, right? He IS language in some sense. Like, apparently his CORDIS crashed into the alphabet after his first encounter with the Doctor, annihilating the 27th letter of the alphabet and causing the English Great Vowel Shift. This story does a ton with the concept of "what if a guy was words".

But what makes him so dangerous is a quirk of his own identity. To grasp what a Word Lord can do, you have to think linguistically, dialogically. Imagine someone haplessly says: "but, nobody could have gotten into that locked room to kill the ambassador!" What would that allow a Word Lord to do? And imagine further:

"No-one tells the sun whether or not to shine." "Nobody could survive that!" "Nobody could just kill the Doctor!"

One slip of the tongue, that's all it takes for Nobody No-one to gleefully command godlike power.

That's Nobody, though. I don't think Susan Twist is just Nobody. I mean, No-one could seriously ask you to believe that this character who appeared in an (unfairly, given its quality) obscure audio adventure, written by an author who only ever wrote those two stories for Doctor Who, with a bunch of wild over the top and no doubt difficult to write around powers, is going to suddenly come back as a major character in the third tv revival of this 60 year old franchise. Like, Nobody would expect Davies to start referencing, I don't know, the Shalka Doctor either, surely. And I wouldn't ask you to make that kind of totally absurd leap, not even if I happened to be writing some sort of tongue in cheek article.

No, what I'm--I mean, what the fans are suggesting is that this concept of a Time Lord but for stories, who comes from a Borgesian narrative dimension, appearing in one and one quarter obscure audio dramas by an author who never wrote anything else for Doctor Who... what the theory proposes is that there's a SECOND one of those guys.

Just think about it, think about it like a Word Lord. What has the fandom asked itself about this season? Surely, one of the foremost questions is simply: what about Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter? She's been name dropped a few times, the Doctor doesn't say she's definitively dead... could there be some reveal here that Susan is alive? There's got to be, right? That's what they're leading up to!

There's just got to be a Susan Twist.

That, my friends, is exactly how she snuck into this reality.

Now, maybe the "Susan Triad" slated to appear next episode isn't this Word Lord proper but a kind of, I don't know, fictionsuit or vessel or entry point. I'm also not sure what a "Susan Twist" would even want, what the grand scheme would be. Unlike Nobody No-one, there's not a lot of word games you can play with "Susan Twist" beyond the obvious. But, maybe that's part of the point. Nobody No-one was a megalomaniac, a guy who really did just want to watch the world burn. The Doctor's companion Hex accuses him of being "proper mad", and he responds, "Mad? I'm FUUURIOUS!" followed by an explosion from the grenade he had tossed into the duck pond. Nobody is a brash, arrogant, chaotic, and... probably not that bright guy, who has the advantage of his CORDIS's many tricks and his incredibly versatile name. Perhaps this new Word Lord wants something other than chaos and destruction. Maybe she simply wants what we've already seen her achieve in the show: universal ubiquity. There's always a Twist at the end.

Actually, this would weirdly parallel another beat from Death in the Family. In order to trap Nobody, the Doctor weaponizes his own narrative against the Word Lord, tapping into the universal internet and googling himself in order to build a whole proxy universe based on his own life. From another perspective, he basically uses the entire narrative of Doctor Who--all the episodes, all the Big Finish audios, all the Doctor Who Monthly comics, all the Virgin New Adventures--as an ideatic missile. This is such a cool concept I'd feel guilty about giving it away, only it happens about a fifth of the way through Death in the Family. Seriously, this audio GOES places. Anyway, the suggestion is that the Doctor is so entangled with the history of the universe, so threaded throughout all these other narratives, that his history effectively is a world unto itself that a being of narrative like Nobody might get completely lost in.

That's a kind of narrative ubiquity if there ever was one. If I was a Word Lord I'd be sorely tempted by that. Nobody is: he appears a perverse counterpart to the Doctor (and personally I think David Tennant would do a GREAT job playing him if he ever appeared in the show). I can't help but notice, incidentally, that we just got an episode where the shapeshifting Chuldur quickly became obsessed with cosplaying as the Doctor, and Wild Blue Yonder also introduced a couple of not-things trying to copy him. Could this Word Lord be seeking to build a narrative as strong and inescapable as the Doctor's?

It would be an interesting way of incorporating some of these meta elements without slipping too far into a kind of self-referential morass. It feels like Davies has been dancing right up on that line this entire season in a way that's exhilarating, but that also has been a bit nerve wracking for me. The more metatextual storytelling has exited the realm of weird independent art and entered the mainstream, the more cloying it's started to feel. Like, when you engage the audience, entreat them directly to care about the characters or write tearful paeans to the necessity of the Hero as a Symbol, the more it can start to feel like a bit of a desperate exercise in brand management. Clap if you DO believe in fairies, and all that. Doctor Who certainly has some history of guilt here--sorry, Steven Moffat, but sometimes it does get to be a bit much. And it does risk standing the purpose of literature on its head, where ironically through characters lauding the virtues of storytelling within society, the virtue of having participated in a transaction consuming art becomes the foundation of fandom, and the actual literary content is assumed, but treated as an afterthought.

Davies has thus far instead treated the meta content in two ways: as a unique physics to be solved, and as a way of exploring a particular bit of social commentary (sometimes more than one at once). Goblins use a "language of luck" and a physics of rope and knots, the Toymaker brings the world into a State of Play, and Maestro introduces a State of Musicals. To challenge these beings, the Doctor must understand their particular ontology and exploit it. As soon as the Bogeyman in Space Babies faces real peril, all the children who were afraid of it rally to its defense, which doubles as both a commentary on the "Teatime Terror for Tots" charge thrown at children's media like Doctor Who--children LIKE scary stories and creepy, gross monsters!--and reinforces Davies's acidic anger at social and political abandonment of people who are inconvenient to the bottom line. Rogue plays gleefully with fanfiction tropes, and its positioning of the Chuldur as "cosplayers" would riiight up to the edge of being a little too navel gazing about toxic fans... if not for the fact that the Doctor and Ruby are also explicitly cosplaying as Bridgerton characters, and the episode is still giving fans exactly what they want in the form of a whirlwind gay Doctor/Rogue romance. This season is concerned with these sorts of metatextual games, without being subsumed by them and becoming entirely about self-referential brand building.

A Death in the Family is also, notably, only partly about Nobody No-one and his machinations and the counter-machinations required to stop him, set into motion by the Seventh Doctor and carried out beyond his death by companions Ace and Hex. Like I said, a lot of the seismic action of the story is over within the first 25 minutes. The Word Lord is really just used as a jumping off point to talk about a bunch of other stuff: truth, lies, choices made for ourselves or made for us by others... we see multiple information-worlds built in the story, some of them more subtle than others. At one point Ace tearfully proclaims that traveling on the TARDIS with the Doctor "is the only life I've ever wanted!" The Seventh Doctor retorts, with some audible guilt and distress, "No, it's the only life you've ever HAD!" In a very real sense, the Doctor has created the notional worlds that Ace and Hex inhabit, defining the contours of Ace's life since she was a teenager, and deliberately staying silent about Hex's traumatic family history, deciding for both of them "what's best". Nobody No-one in that sense is a pretext, in the best tradition of Doctor Who, to dig into questions about power.

The metafictional is risky, but it's a narrative tool like any other, and it fits with a long history of Doctor Who as a franchise reflecting on itself and its place in culture, with everything from the Mind Robber's suggestion that the Doctor himself might be an escapee from fiction, to Vengeance on Varos and Trial of a Time Lord's dramatization of Doctor Who's conservative culture war critics, to the Last Great Time War as metaphor for the show's cancellation. In a sense, behaving as though cosplay or fandom or whatever don't exist and couldn't possibly be the idiom through which characters--even weird alien characters--interpret their reality and act upon it might equally alienate the show from being about any wider culture beyond itself, endlessly, the same dalek and cybermen and Master stories recycling forever. My hope is just that as Davies barrels into the finale at full speed, it's this sense of a meaning for Doctor Who beyond its own lore driving him. The anger we've seen from him about social issues, the commitment to changing the show where it needs to grow, and the willingness to take big swings at continuity all give me some reason to feel confident.

Confident, of course, that he has seen the wisdom and logic of building his arc around Susan Twist being a Word Lord. What? That's what this article is about, remember? That didn't stop being a thing. Anyway, I'm excited for friday, when all of us pulling for this theory will be proven indisputably right, and you will all, in deference, subscribe to my Patreon.

* alleged ** hypothetical *** me, specifically

[herinsectreflection]

I do love the way that Cordy is so obviously just running Angel Investigations all the time. She's doing budgets, chasing invoices, she's making calls, she's getting things signed that need signed. She's not just important for the visions - she's doing the actual on-the-ground things required to allow AI to function as an actual business as well as a journey towards cosmic redemption.

She's so set in this role that by the end of the first series she can just hand Angel things and he signs them without a thought. Because she's running this company. To paraphrase Anya - without her, Angel would in fact be a scared old man staring at a quarterly tax return and wetting himself.