#I would say Thoschei but for me they fuck

[thecreatorfromgallifrey]

Every hypersexual queer need their asexual partner in crime

If i see an asexual alone outside I’ll help them look for their lost assigned hypersexual before they break down crying

If I see a hypersexual alone outside I’ll speed to find their assigned asexual before they get arrested for arson

[itssofuckingover]

something something the doctor is forgiving To A Fault because he knows what it is to love literally the most fucked up guy ever despite his moral reservations and protests to their behavior he loves them and can’t help but hold hope with him for every other awful thing in the universe and that’s an expression of love as profound and tragic as anything

[lesbiantrish]

i think i could heal if people were more crazy about spydoc. btw

[quietwingsinthesky]

like we are all aware that twissy is not the “healthy” version of thoschei, right? that the doctor keeping missy in a cage and withholding her freedom and any future friendship with him until she becomes acceptable to him, even if “for her own good”, is still. bad. i keep joking about how he put his evil wife in a box, but like. he put his evil wife in a box. just because the toxic behavior here is gentler doesn’t make it better.

[icarusredwings]

The thing about Thoschei that's so funny is that these are literally all the same people, meaning technically these are all the same ship.

We have these two. Yes? We know twissy. We love twissy.

We have spy doc, yeah? We love spydoc.

We have our beloved/beloathed Simmten. Everyone loves simmten.

We even have whatever these two weirdos had going on.

BUT - Have you ever ever thought about what would happen if you mixed them up? It feels illegal (as in, 'These two specifically are a bonded pair, do not separate' joking matter), but think about the chaos implications.

Can you fucking imagine if you shoved THIS man (6) with Simm! Master? Someone's gonna regenerate. Im not sure who yet. Mel's definitely gonna scream at him, though.

"Ello dear friend do you mind coming along and-"

"Why the fuck do you look like that?"

"Like what??"

"Like a unicorn stomped on you, ate you and puked you back up!"

"You don't like it? What's wrong with it? Is it the hair?"

"Is it the?- NO YOU MORON!"

Or Missy with 9? The amount of arguments and pouting- A lot of sarcastic banter. Maybe a hissy fit. A sissy slap fight if you will because deep down he would care if she got hurt so wouldn't actually ever hit her but would say some pretty mean things.

"Fine! Then go to your room!"

"I'll do no such thing! And you can't make me!"

"Then die! See if I care!"

"Only if you let me kill you first!!"

"Try! See what happens!"

"You dare hit a lady??"

"Pft- I'd hardly call you a lady..."

Yana! Master and 13? Tinker buddies! (They're basically in a love triangle with Chantho)

Roberts! Master with 15? I have a feeling this would kinda slap. Idk why, but I just do.

"So. What so you think?"

"Oh! Sister yes!!"

"... I am neither your sibiling.. nor a woman..?"

"Its an expression babes."

"Why are you calling me such affections??"

I feel in my gut that these two would get along decently well, except this time 12 is the bad influence, not him. If anything, it would consist of 12 showing him earthling things.

"...So.. Uno.."

"Yes."

"I have to have one card left..?"

"Yes."

"...why don't I just throw away my other cards?"

"That's against the rules I think."

"Says who?"

"Says... well... says.. the rules." 💁

Dhawan! Master and 10? 10 could fix him within an episode. I'm sure of it. Hell 14 could fix him. Might take a little longer, though. Dhawan would make tea for him after they go to therapy together. Their therapist says they should work on their co-dependency, but they think she just "doesn't get their dynamic"

I think it would be really funny if we shoved 4 with missy too. Sarah Jane and her would have so much beef. It would be unreal. I do think that Dhawan would be fond of K9 the most though, and Simm would probably be the type to get jealous of a robotic dog...

[rowanthestrange]

The Media Overanalysis (O)Mega Essay: Why Rogue Is The Bad Guy. Duh.

Code Mauve. Sorry, you’re a mutual and directly responded, so now you get The Post. It was bound to be someone eventually, and it was you. It’s nothing personal. You were just the first to dare my parapet.

@icantleave replied: rogue definitely isn't the master because the master is simply incapable of cosplaying someone this genuine and unlike himself, his disguises are always essentially very him with a few traits hidden or amplified.

Either there is a psy-op and Disney aired a different version of this or a solid quarter of you got brain broken by American Mr Darcy- no don’t try and run, get back here. The only running you’re doing is this essay equivalent of a 10k.

You are intelligent. All of you. And yet what the hell does this mean? “rogue definitely isn't the master because the master is simply incapable of cosplaying someone this genuine and unlike himself”

We’re going through this episode. All of it. This is not actually an ‘it is the Master’ post, it is a ‘but at the very least he sure acts like the Master would’ post, which is the above premise. But also just in general that Rogue is The Bad Guy.

Take it as the Master cosplaying Jack; a Pantheon member whose theme is Roleplay who like the others has watched the show and is deliberately filling the void daddy created and getting in by cosplaying the Master cosplaying Jack (has to be doing both to be skilled at Roleplay ala Maestro and the Toymaker’s skills in their areas, else he’d just be shittily cosplaying Jack); or literally he is just baddie Chuldur #6 fanboy who wants to bang the Doctor he saw on TV cus he’s sexy and they get Doctor Who out there as well as Bridgerton. All the concepts are adjacent:

Baddie fanboy roleplaying as Jack to fuck-slash-fuck-with the Doctor.

Places people. Let’s take it from the top:

-We start with a scene showing someone (Chuldur #2) who wants to roleplay as the bad guy because that would be fun.

-(Bonus: the writers talking about themselves - “Wonderful party, your Grace.” “Some are saying best of the season. A triumph. A new standard set. And I, of course, could not comment. But I think the real estimation of an evening is in the matches made.” I quite agree.)

-(We are also in Tredegar House, which you may recognise from The End Of Time, Spyfall, and other times in New Who. We like this place.

-There is electronic interference in Ruby’s earpiece. The Doctor scans this and finds it’s coming from Rogue. The Master is a frequent user of manipulative electronics both towards other people and to disguise himself. Put a pin in this, it’ll come up at the end. ✅

-The Doctor meets Rogue to the backing of hit pop song, Billie Eilish’s “I’m The Bad Guy”. The Master is a famous lover of fun pop, and being obvious to an oblivious Doctor. ✅✅

I wrestled with iMovie at midnight to put the lyric subtitles to this video and you are going to watch and appreciate it:

[If at any point you want out of this essay, all you have to do is come back to here and watch this video again while singing in your head along with the lyrics to receive a passing grade.]

-They deliberately work the lines around the music, not just thematically but so you can clearly hear what the backing song is. And made sure they kept the scene going long enough all the way into the next section just so they could keep the line: “I like it when you take control, even if you know that you don't, own me, I'll let you play the role, I'll be your animal.” Fuck’s sake. Most Thoschei song. Interchangeable freaks.

-Rogue is critiqued by the Doctor for not acting appropriately broody enough. The Master well known for being a fairly shit actor. ✅

-That is an American accent. This is a red flag for either being a Pantheon member, or the Master Dressing For The Occasion (which Rogue certainly has).

-“Do you practise in a mirror?” - him roleplaying would mean literally yes.

-“I didn’t know the Duchess employs a court jester.” - Alexa please search every time the Master has called the Doctor some derivation of clown. ✅

-“O…Kay…Rude. Lord-?” “Not a Lord.” Our last outing with the Master was all about his psyche-destroying discovery of being made from the Not-A-Time Lord Doctor; and if he is Pantheon The Rogue roleplaying as the Master, then just chef’s kiss line. But I will be magnanimous this early in proceedings, and let you go ‘technically a valid meta read is saying that conforms he’s not a Time Lord’. But the paragraph stands.

-He calls himself Rogue:

1. noun: a dishonest or unprincipled person. "You are a rogue and an embezzler" Similar: scoundrel, villain, reprobate. 2. noun: an elephant or other large wild animal living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies. "a rogue elephant"

If it’s the Master then straight up naming himself “The Bad Guy” is on brand. The Master is a Rogue Time Lord. That is what fandom has long called them - ‘Rogues and Renegades’. The Master is shite at names, if you haven’t had the pleasure of the Third Doctor’s company yet. Shitty anagrams, tenuous links to goals and character aspects, and crappy puns are the standard ✅. If Pantheon, then his choice in lifestyle that’s more about personally having fun (ultimately still Doctor compatible), with a group, in a non-competitive game which has no win condition other than enjoying the game, though rip to the NPC’s being played with as character, would definitely put him somewhat apart from the wreaking havoc on the universe others. If a Pantheon member, he literally did choose his own name from D&D.

-Just generalised throughout: Rogue is not actually suave. Some people find his secret awkwardness under the posh gear charming. The Master is not suave and is awkward, but desperately tries to style it out like he is anyway, that’s just his character. ✅

-We kinda feel like we’re going into some Karny Shobogony kind of cave area, we’re not, but just for the hitting home that this is another Upper Class Gallifrey mirror for the season. You don’t need to think the Master’s involved for this, don’t worry, wasn’t in Dot And Bubble was he, but that was a clear enough mirror. A person appearing as a servant forces their way up the social ladder. If you like some mirror play and are really deep in your TC ‘what kind of person would name themselves Master’, you’re having fun. Also I can’t see that type of death lightning without thinking of Simm!Master. Costly effect, but we went with it, and it does add some panache.

-Chuldur #5 is roleplaying Emily (this is used both in her disguise and out - potentially playing the same ‘character’. We’ll come back to this too, explore more later), who will be something of our Master this evening in the Gallifrey mirror if you’re going in for it. Also coincidentally is half the mirror pair with Ruby to the Doctor and Rogue. “Emily, please-” “But you consume me sir. I think of you every waking hour and I hate myself for it!” yeah we know babe… Anyone else hearing Dhawan!Master’s “I cannot bear that”?

-“I love these old skies” - all the stars makes it arguably sound more like a Flux reference rather than just light pollution. And we all know what event by who triggered that off.

-Finally we get more lines from Rogue, this has all been very one-sided. “Do you never stop chattering?” - a frequent refrain of the Master, who, fun fact has told the Doctor to shut up in every incarnation in New Who (and probably Old but this is the trivia I have) ✅

-If Rogue is supposedly wanting to stop the bad birdies, real weird he doesn’t give an appropriately flying fuck about the mysterious lone shoe. And simply says “I suggest look for the other shoe” like it doesn’t matter with a shrug. Because the Master is stupid and shite at keeping in-character. ✅ Makes sense if he’s on the bad guy’s team though. Also Cinderella. Noticing themes in today’s mirror subtext.

-They find it plus corpse. “And you knew. You didn’t even flinch.” Actually wrong, the Doctor can’t see behind him but we can. Rogue doesn’t flinch at the shoe, or coming up to the body, but when the Doctor says it’s the Duchess, Rogue does a slight ‘oh’ lean back, and then a sigh with a bit of a slump. To me this reads as a ‘oh you fucking idiots’ for doing it this blatantly, but I won’t mark it, cus you could argue that ultimately maybe a bounty hunter might care more about the death of the duchess in particular and sigh about it etc. (Or he is Pantheon roleplayer getting annoyed his gang can’t stick to a character and risking the outline going off-track and more bodycounty). “And you knew” - Rogue doesn’t keep eye contact but closes his eyes, opens them immediately up and a little to the side, thinking of what to say next style. ((This specific circumstance he couldn’t have known about prior, cus the murder happens while he’s inside))

-“This is a murder far beyond the technologies of planet Earth. It could only be done by someone brilliant.” “And monstrous.” [-horny flirting tone looking him up and down] “And ruthless.” “And contemptible.” Both: “You.” He is the Master and in with the bird gang. No bounty hunter with a heart of gold is calling the murderer brilliant because also, may have been easy to miss, but the Doctor hasn’t done anything brilliant yet unless you include owning a scanner and briefly infodumping about constellations. That is a Master talking about himself kinda line. ✅

-The Doctor thought Rogue was a murderer who was calling himself brilliant, and it only made him more horny, and proceeded to dance along with that little two-step. If I’m Master-brained, what’s he? Cus he’s usually only into one murderer. If that guy had snogged him instead of pulling the gun they’d have fucked right then and there, that scene has so much sexual tension that should not be there.

-Edit - courtesy of @katoska: “#though dimensionally transcendental pockets would explain where he'd hidden that big gun in that form fitting outfit.” - And why wouldn’t you have given him one of Jack’s guns, they’re all smaller? But they made Rogue a huge one.

-“So who do you think I am?” “I know you’re a Chuldur.” “The shapeshifters? Ha, I’ve heard of them. I’ve never met one,” *tilting head back towards Rogue and smiling* “Unless I have.” Please, if nothing else, come out of this thinking at minimum he is bad birdie Chuldur #6. Maybe we’re rewriting Frobisher. Heavily, heavily rewriting.

-“[his ship] cloaked behind that shed.” Calling the TARDIS a shed. It was Three that technically said it but the Master has repeatedly expressed his disdain for our beautiful police box before so that’s a Master-fitting line, be it intentional disdain or not yet. ✅

-Won’t call it a point, but he tells us he is a bounty hunter sent here to find them for the money. (Note: not kill - at the very least a bounty hunter would be bringing back the body to get, you know, the bounty). Aside from being a cheap and easy backstory it’s evidently morally bad, for all the Doctor literally goes ‘that is so…cool’ - which is absolutely not his usual position on bounty hunters.

-The thing he uncloaks the ship with? Same thing that controls the traps. How multitool. How sonic screwdriver. Or Laser screwdriver TCE as you prefer.

-His ship is a bird. It has wings, two eyes, and a beak. He is with the birds. He is The Bad Guy ✅. He is using and familiar with the bird ship; or at the insane alternative a TARDIS that completely disguised itself both outside and inside as neighbouring bird ship. There is no good guy answer for why he is in a bird ship. We never ask how the birds got here. But it was probably the bird ship. Bird ship.

-Meta so I can’t give it a point cus it’s beyond our scope but: “Oh you’re the Duchess! Of course, I should have scented you.” Not immediately recognising one of your own species when you should have sensed them thank god that’s not a mirror.

-His ship has an angular console in the middle of it with mirroring angular shape above it, the same taste in decor as the Master does with a TARDIS, like it’s almost designed to put you in mind of one, cute. ✅

-“This place is a mess.” Dhawan!Master’s TARDIS house and console room proper were a massive mess, these guys share housekeeping habits too. ✅

-“I live alone.” The Doctor notes this sort of ship would be piloted by two. Aw sad. Except he’s lying, he’s obviously lying, because he has dice on the table and he’s not playing D&D in his bird-shaped ship alone or with only two fucking people, is he? You need a group. Maybe of Bird roleplaying enthusiasts. Liar. Bad conduct. And failed to remove the evidence that contradicted the lie - dumbass Master behaviour. ✅

-Rogue declares “You’re a killer.” And the Doctor goes “Oh well,” before trying to sonic himself out of the situation, without actually defending himself against the charges. Maybe doesn’t feel the need to. For some reason.

-“What do those things do?” “It’s a trap. Triform on.” Now that could easily be a Master when he’s being sexier line, complete with his classic dumbass behaviour of declaring to the Doctor that something’s a trap before actually springing it. ✅

-He says he is going to send the Doctor to the incinerator. Why? ‘Uh he’s a bounty hunter’ Yeah. So why would he burn the evidence that would get him the money? Can’t just rock up and say ‘I dealt with it I pinkie-promise’.

-The Doctor attempts to sonic his way out of the trap before it finishes charging. Rogue says immediately that it’s deadlocked. The one thing that stops a sonic screwdriver. You can’t deny, that is the level of forethought the Master would manage to scrounge together. ✅

-Rogue scans the Doctor’s gadget, allowed in cus it doesn’t recognise it as dangerous device (oh the old ‘temporal grace field’ in the TARDIS, that’s a nice little mirror), and apparently the scans say it’s a screwdriver. I can’t prove this is a lie, but even we don’t think it’s a screwdriver, the last one with 14 literally was so much not a screwdriver it couldn’t unscrew screws, so unless it connects to the system with the name 15_screwdriver_1 again, feels too convenient. But a toxic Doctor fanboy would be able to identify what it was.

-I don’t know why we have a Sonic Monocular scene that cost us money and effort to produce when we could have just glanced across the table, but since all things that cost money in production have a reason, maybe the laser screwdriver style object we pan over? Point of interest but not a countable one, and either way the main argument is aligning character traits not convincing you he literally is the Master.

-“Roll for insight”, he cracked a smile, so surprising it uncloaked the Doctor’s full Scottish accent. This is the first positive character trait we have seen. We are just shy of halfway through the story.

-Telling the Doctor to “Roll for insight” after he sees the dice, is a dungeon Master’s instruction.

-of course he likes D&D, he plays it with the birds on the bird ship, he’s sent the birds he plays it with off out to continue the game in Bridgerton, he’s being their dungeon Master in real life too

-Seriously if you think Rogue is genuinely just a good guy bounty hunter and we should believe that uncritically, why would they tell us he likes roleplaying in D&D so much he picked his name from it? He roleplays. That’s one of the very few things we know about him. Why not chess? Or Minecraft? He could have liked Tetris? Why would he like roleplaying in the episode about roleplaying if him roleplaying isn’t relevant?

-The Master too adores roleplaying while also not being that great at it. Just putting that out there.

-“And it says that you’re wired for sound!” *sonics* ‘I Just Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ by Kylie Minogue plays. *Rogue looks up in full wide-eyed uh-oh then turns to the Doctor* “Now this is a surprise.” - I mean, yeah, it is actually. I mean why would there be such anachronistic music playing in a ship owned by a guy from…well funny I guess he never said and the Doctor never asked. Well from a species like…well alright uh guess we didn’t do that either. Said ‘planet Earth’ that’s a pretty alien way of phrasing it. “Hey but in the Whoniverse Britney Spears’ Toxic is a traditional Earth ballad”, and maybe usually I’d let it go, but this is the second anachronistic bit of music we’ve heard, and the third we hear later is even more pointed to draw your attention to it. No. It’s weird. You know who it wouldn’t be weird to though? Our pop loving Master! And that’s the most Thoschei Thesis Statement song in Kylie’s repertoire! ✅ (Or Pantheon sharing daddy’s Spice Girls thing for 90’s pop). The Master would also absolutely have forgotten to delete his playback history before all this and pull an ‘oh shit’ face not from embarrassment but cus he knows this looks fucky because he doesn’t have a poker face he’s an idiot that panics the second anything in his plans ever goes wrong. ✅

-The Doctor mouthing: “Boy your loving is all I think about.” A sentiment that’s cropped up multiple times now this episode. Also in a Master mirror. Mhm. It’s a sickness babes.

-But hey we’re up to two positive character traits for Rogue so far - likes D&D and Kylie (both anachronisticly).The Doctor was willing to follow him out and blow him in the shrubbery for less, and honestly, respectable. “I just have a crush on prettyboy American Mr Darcy” is a defence, not a good one, but still.

-The Doctor and Master with one turning the music on and the other trying to turn it off would be a scene, you can imagine it, don’t lie, you’re imagining Missy and Twelve right now. (I think for annoyer-and-annoyed Three and Delgado could go either way depending on the episode. How appropriate for them.) ✅

-Also Rogue attempting to snatch the sonic screwdriver from the taller Doctor’s hand as he plays keep-away. Bitchy, gay, very character-breaking with the rest of the episode, deeply funny. The Master would. ✅ Then gathering himself, putting on the I’m In Charge voice and holding out his hand for the Doctor to hand it over and he does. (Huh, have you guys as a whole watched Delgado? Is this what creates the ‘the Master would never’? Cus actually if you’ve not seen these two just be a bit silly with each other and think that’s just fan characterisation that would actually explain a lot. Eh, but Missy and Twelve(/Clara) have some silly too, if not Three and Delgado level. Hm, to ponder).

-Psychic paper would also not work on the Master and he would say “it says ‘you’re hot’” to fluster the Doctor. Also we know he’s lying about it saying that, because he’s the one saying he’s seen it written, yet immediately follows up as the Doctor babbles with, Rogue: “Is it ‘you’re hot’, or I’m hot’?” Rogue would know which word was written the funny ambiguity is only from the non-seer’s side on hearing the other person say ‘you’re’. ✅

-“Suits you, flustered, it’s a good look for you.” Finally we get some fun confidence - which only appears the second he actually gets an upper hand with the Doctor on the back foot. Like someone else we know. Also yet again we have the phrase “a good look” for you in this episode all about shapeshifting. The phrase is applied to Rogue by the Doctor, to the Doctor from Rogue, and among the birds to each other. It establishes an equivalence between them, which is odd if Rogue is supposedly the only one not shapeshifting and roleplaying.

-The boss thing, callback to the Meep. Again this isn’t a ‘convince you it really is the Master’ thing, it’s character analysis that their traits overlap and he is a bad guy. But since we’re here, the Master is often technically working for someone else he intends to double-cross while thinking he’s ahead of them (nearly every time incorrectly), and we know he is/will be involved with the Pantheon — given this guy is a dice rolling gameplayer, the Master gambling and losing to the Toymaker, just vibes like it’d be out of order and future toothening imo — while there’s nothing to say our hidden ‘The Boss’ is Pantheon, I’m gonna Occam’s Razor and assume both those plot threads tie together, and for now that’s a reasonable way to explain how the Master got involved with the Toymaker at all.

-“I’m just so trigger happy.” Literally a Master line, and one we just had: “Oh, shoot. I should've said, somebody needs to cut you down to size, then zapped you. I was just trigger-happy. I'll use it next time.” ✅

-Floating Doctor heads literally the Master’s nightmare. Literally literally but I can’t remember where from and ‘master nightmare floating head doctor who’ gets you about as useless information as you’d imagine.

-Look. Rogue goes from confidently being about to kill the Doctor. The Doctor forces the scanner to show some other of his faces with the psychic paper, does his whole speech saying he’s “not a Chuldur. I’m something much older and far more powerful. A Lord of Time from the lost and fallen planet of Gallifrey” (this is a special surprise that will help us later) “Now, let me go, bounty hunter. We have work to do.” It is cringe, it is up himself and lording over others which is nearly always punished, the Doctor uses his special Deep And Majestic voice, and our stoic confident Rogue is suddenly wide-and-starry-eyed and breathily says, “Wow.” In the fakest response I have ever seen. Sadly I am not allowed more than one video. But oh my God, if you need a refresher it’s 18:14. And if you think it isn’t fake, yes you need the refresher.

You can’t be buying that OwO “Wow”. You think that was the turning point? I know I’m supposed to provide better analysis, but the writing is cringe, the acting is completely counter to what it was a moment ago for both parties, is over the top, and you think a bounty hunter would do a 180 from that?? Why?? ‘Oh you’re showing me the faces you’ve been before, yeah, I know, you’re a shapeshifter’. Nothing in the scanner says he’s a Time Lord, just the words from his mouth, why would he not be lying to save his own skin? And again, what would a Time Lord mean in the universe now? Who gives a shit, if you know what they are you know they’re all dead and reasonable shot you’re happy about that. Failing even that, Rogue is working for the same Boss as the Meep - if the word Time Lord rang a bell it’d be cus Fourteen caused problems last time ‘bring him to me’, surely. “Wow” uwu so cool! Really??? Nothing, not a thing Rogue has done so far, indicates he would be “Wow” to that. Not a damn thing.

Fakest response I’ve ever seen - Groff is actually a good actor so it’s supposed to be fake, at least one of the writers is award winning and may well be both, and Ncuti went out of his way to make it look like unnatural arrogance that doesn’t fit with the previous acting choices either in this scene or the whole show so far. So either all these people were crap at their jobs, or, it’s supposed to smell like bullshit. Would the Master look exactly as fake going “wow” because his character needs to have the heel-turn now? Yes ✅. And that you pulled this speech in front of him would complete its vast circle of cringe and roleplaying.

And what happens next? We cut straight to Ruby and Cosplaying Chuldur #5: [Giggling] “We can’t keep hiding like this!” You guys are smart, don’t pretend you’re not smart, if you follow me you know how good writing works, and are choosing to ignore the meta and mirrors and themes of the episode in a way you wouldn’t with a normal Rusty-written one that you’d sit and deeply analyse. Different writers yes, but smart and capable and award winning ones. These aren’t two disparate stories smushed together, they’re the same story in different keys, that’s the Rule One here.

Continuing, Ruby tries to convince High Society Lord- Lady that she doesn’t have to marry another Lord but could be a normal person, and then the Lady says “I’ll marry someone lesser, and smaller…it may not be love but perhaps a kindly smile at dinner…and then a shared grave” cus she doesn’t want a normal person, that’s what Ruby wants her to want, she wants to marry her kinda shitty Lord. Because that’s what this fantasy roleplay is all about.

Okay essay portion over we got out of hand, bullet points, re-engage.

-A motherfucking owl hoots, with the subtitle “owl hoots”, while Rogue recloaks the giant bird ship, giving us a second look at it again, making sure we get the full distance shot and shimmery cloaking effect to highlight the wings if they get lost in the shadows. Rogue. Is with. The birds. It’s a bird ship. There is no good guy explanation for the bird ship and its D&D equipment that can only be used by multiple people in our episode about obsessive-roleplaying birds.

-Rogue has now packed. ‘What?’ Rogue has now packed. He is now carrying a small bag, cross-body strap over his shoulder. We will not use anything from this bag or see him access it or acknowledge it at all. He’s just brought it with him. Perhaps like he knows he’s not going to be going back to the ship again. Curious.

Dice Bag propoganda post

-“You ready for this?” [low tone] “It’s not my first shed.” - woah woah woah, where’s all the sparkle of a minute ago babes, I thought you were ‘OwO wow’, if you know what a Time Lord is you know what a TARDIS is, but you’re not excited no mo? Or he’s doing it to deliberately make the TARDIS inside reveal cooler in contrast because he knows how much the Doctor likes this moment.

-“O my God” - haha namedrop. This happens to be Mastery behaviour cus this is just the Dhawan!Master pretending to be O entering the TARDIS scene. You were catfished by this before, come on babes. ✅

-“Come with me, and we’ll be, in a world of pure imagination…” - what are you imagining babes? Are ya roleplaying son? Cosplaying? Engaging in a bit of the old fantasy right now. No? He’s just feeling in a chocolatey kind of mood? Uhuh.

-“I’m in love!” - Now isn’t this a 180 on the character? From so reticent and ‘most serious man on earth’ to loudly declaring his love for the ship. Which just so happens to be the Doctor’s number one kink. And what does the TARDIS do in response? She growls. Rule one basic storytelling - the new boyfriend is evil, we knew cus the beloved dog growls at him. Rogue said he was in love and she growled. Gave Jack a bar, an ensuite, and let him tinker with her insides. But to Rogue she growls. Baddie. ✅

-The TARDIS lights are in a red-and-white checkerboard pattern. Our dimensionally transcendental TARDIS is literally a 5d chessboard. I won’t count it, but come on.

-Speaking of dimensionally transcendental, that’s exactly what Rogue called her. Yet didn’t anticipate a TARDIS thirty seconds ago. It takes work to argue he knows about dimensionally transcendental spacetime ships but not know of TARDISes that Time Lords travel in, but does know enough about Time Lords to be dazzled by them when he clearly isn’t of earthly Lords. Much easier to go ‘eh’ keeping the story straight when you’ve got extra knowledge you’re pretending you don’t have, but also need to come across as intelligent, is hard. We’ve all played D&D or at least Let’s Pretend. It’s hard. Lying is hard.

-After a quick “and so clean” back-and-forth, Rogue runs up the stairs, hand on the bannister and leans on the railing. The TARDIS growls again, louder, like a whale. Like she did in the episode with the Not-Things, and with The Maestro. (Arguably her ‘Pantheon’ noise?) Both of them notice. Rogue’s expression immediately turns from an awed open-mouthed smile to blankness, with a head tilt and turn, slowly coming back. “What was that?” The Doctor claims indigestion and she doesn’t like bounty hunters. Not true of the ones with hearts of gold. We’ve seen her with Jack, and River, and she adores them. “It’s the moral void - no offence.” So you’re admitting it. Stating it directly. He’s not got a heart of gold, the omnipotent spacetime ship can see that he’s a moral void. That is what you have said. ✅

-“And this, from the ancient and fallen world of Gallifrey…Where the hell is that?” *buzzer* Wrong. You tried to be clever and aren’t - that wasn’t the line. The line was ‘lost and fallen’ not ‘ancient and fallen’. Oh but Gallifrey is ancient though- *buzzer* He says in the same sentence he doesn’t know of Gallifrey. And yet, he got all wide and starry-eyed over a Time Lord, when he is saying he knows nothing about them. Why? Because he can’t keep his character straight pun intended, which is a character trait of another undercover ex-agent we know. ✅

-“Well I might take you one day.” - bananas response by the Doctor for multiple reasons. ‘I’ll take you to my lost and fallen homeworld’ ok what? Second, Fifteen has for once been very open about his loss in this regard, said repeatedly that it’s gone, and how much it hurts him. Said it to Ruby, to Carla, to complete strangers. But here he’s out of character. Why? Maybe he’s roleplaying one that doesn’t hurt. Maybe because he thinks it’s the Master and is fucking with him. But I’m going with the roleplaying and saying what this character feels. Fucky from the Doctor rather than Rogue.

-“In a few minutes it will no longer be a deathtrap, you are welcome.” [Rogue casually] “Why, what does it do now?” This is all important but also pause to reflect for a moment on whether the character we saw up to this point would have handed his essential survival and work gear to a shapeshifter who claimed to be a Time Lord with zero proof and let him just modify it however. ‘He’s just a very trusting bounty hunter, is all.’ I mean he wasn’t at the start of all this though, was he.

-Doctor boundaries: I can’t let you kill it, “So instead we will transport it to a random barren dimension, no-one to hurt, no way back.” Passing over the obvious, the Doctor is the one programming this. We agree we’re probably not literally installing a randomiser onto the device, we’re just randomly picking one and assigning those coordinates. How do you know it’s barren? Oh the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental we just reminded people, so she can probably see, she’s picking it. Ok. …So there’s no reason she wouldn’t have a record of what she set it to. That’s information we should have. Ok. Which are the letters Rogue says. Ok. What about your bounty job? Not even a response to the no-killing? Or that this seems worse if anything? No. Just ok. We’re saying that a lot in this episode. Ok. Just going along with things. Ok. I know what that word means. Ok.

-“Who did you lose?” “How do you know?” “Cus I know.” Cus we covered this earlier actually when he mentioned the usually two-person’s for captaining an asteroid hopper. Forgot? No worries Rogue, been a long ten minutes. No attempt to make a proper backstory just stares at the Doctor like a cow looking at an oncoming train and goes, “There was- …Yeah. We travelled together, we had fun, you know. And then a day came along, and at the end of that day…I lost them.” Now if this was the Master you’d be saying no shit he can’t provide details and only parrot what the Doctor always says in these situations, he is a moral void, bro has one friend and only knows what it’s like to love that one friend obsessively, he can’t even empathise enough to improvise a backstory that feels realistic. Maybe only lies have details but you can argue my guy didn’t even commit to a gender. It’s also a valid read to assume he’s just short on words at losing his fellow they/them bounty-hunter crook friend. Maybe the OwO Time Lord thing is enough to make him open up a little even if the Doctor’s done nothing to earn that trust yet. But both work just fine, if it was the Master it’d be how he’d do it. ✅

-“What about you?” The Doctor’s expression hardens here. Maybe cus it just hurts. Maybe for other reasons. [coldly, we linger on him] “I lost everyone.” Rogue still with too-wide-cow-train eyes . “But at the party I saw you with that woman...” That tone. And how we immediately wave his ‘Best Friend’ aside. Look, again it’s a watch the scene. These two are good actors, they’re excellent. And down to the ‘huh’ head tilt before Groff’s line with every microexpression he is radiating a guy playing a role while still trying to poke his roleplaymate in his open wound with a stick. There has never been just one layer in anything in the show so far why would it start now in the episode about cosplaying people to death do you part, why? Why?? The one mirror everyone can accept is Captain Jack and he was literally a con man. This is a con man you are being conned. If you look at his face and think he’s being earnest you are extra weak to con men do not give strangers your credit card details. Didn’t you have jerk friends? We all had jerk friends. That is the expression the jerk friend made when they were just asking questions *blink* *blink* don’t get upset. Or Groff is a garbage actor. But he isn’t. Just the character he’s playing is crap at acting. Go back and watch O, the cow-eyes are textbook liar, any liar, but especially the Master ✅. They’re doing a scene, it is diegetic. The acting is diegetic.

-“You don’t have to stay a bounty hunter, [beat pause] Rogue.” You can say it’s just cus he knows Rogue isn’t his real name but the Doctor’s usually fine with that sort of thing. “You could travel with me[…]the worlds I could show you…” “And what if I like what I do? Would you travel with me?” “That is quite an argument. ((No it isn’t he doesn’t like bounty hunters)) I’ll tell you what, when we both get out of this, let’s argue across the stars.” This is the Doctor and Master scene, we do these scenes every incarnation all the way since half-share in the universe, you don’t have to think he’s the Master but we know these lines damn well are. ✅

-They nearly kiss but the TARDIS cockblocks them with a beep of being finished with the rewiring, because again, she doesn’t like the moral void, and does not want the Doctor to stick his dick in it. And what does the Doctor say as he steps back from their almost kiss? “The trap is ready.”

-[Rogue is sans new bag for the indoor scenes here, I believe this is just a costuming error that happened from them probably reshooting the dancing a bajillion times, it will come back when they’re back outside again and in every subsequent scene onwards]

-They meet back up with Rubes and Roleplaying Chuldur #5. Ruby asks a very good question. “Ok, but what does anyone get out of killing these people? I mean I know they’re posh nobs and all that, but we found the housekeeper dead. I mean why would anybody do that?” And the Doctor, instead of saying ‘it’s how they steal their bodies they’re shapeshifters’ says the meta-important answer first. “The dance. The drama. The emotion.” THIS IS ABOUT GALLIFREY. High society here is a mirror for the aforementioned fallen Gallifrey. The Master didn’t just genocide the Time Lords, he killed every Shobogon/lay-Gallifreyan without Child-stolen regenerations, he killed every TARDIS, every living thing on the planet. Why? The drama.

-“It’s cosplay. All of this is cosplay.”

-The Doctor turns to a non-plussed looking Rogue and says: “You said that a Chuldur comes to a planet and tries on people like outfits just for the fun of it.” …Wh- when? When did he say that?? (I’m being facetious - he doesn’t). Also does that seem rich coming from the ‘multiple costume changes per episode’ Doctor? Mirrors.

-(If the background music here is Vitamin String Quartet I don’t recognise it unfortunately. Fun Fact, I used them exclusively as background music for my own wedding, cus I thought it’d be fun for people to try and guess the songs if things got boring and it’d be a conversation starter. Ate my wedding cake to Poker Face. We like resonating with the universe here.)

-“Those TV signals beam out across the stars.” “What are these T-V signals?” I can’t add more than one video, so if you’re not willing to take the description on faith it’s 24:45. But watch Rogue here. He slightly turns to her with a little glare and that exact same frustrated little sigh he did with the Duchess corpse earlier. Dungeon Master’s stupidest soldier? Cus you’d think if he was annoyed she was being anachronismatised (real word), he’d have given the Doctor the shut up glare but doesn’t give him bother for it at all. Maybe he’s just a conflict averse bounty hunter. But that’s what the Master would have done, he has low lackey/idiot friend tolerance. Both reads valid. ✅

-The Doctor dances, we know what that���s a metaphor for and what episode it’s from. Good thing Rogue knows all the moves ahead of time.

-Just putting the reminder here cus there’s no clear place - I go with Master because Dungeon Master, I’m A Bad Guy, the mirrors *gestures at everything above* etc. but mostly because this is a deliberate attempt to cosplay Jack. Thus it requires someone who has watched the show. The Pantheon, the Master seems like a good bet, however, could admittedly be Chulder #6 (and they’re just supposed to be a very strong but purely mirror for the Master) and because of their different dimension-ness has watched the show on TV and has figured out how their self-insert is gonna bang the Doctor. But one way or the other, our baddie here has seen Doctor Who The TV Show in the same way the birds watched Bridgerton and this is an intrinsic part of this that shouldn’t be separated. That we have a fanboy who is deliberately cosplaying Jack and invoking him and references to that episode is important.

-Rogue: “So what is this ancient Earth tradition of cosplay?” No-one said it was ancient (twice now), no-one said it was Earth, no-one said it was tradition, even Ruby had to clarify ‘so you mean it’s literally dressing up and playing at Bridgerton?’ Rogue almost certainly already knows what it means. And we know the birds do. This is our baddie having fun. Because as the Doctor says next: “Oh, Rogue. It’s when fans dress up as characters that they like.” (Point to Pantheon, because roleplaying the Master would be dressing up as a character from Doctor Who that they like).

-General note again: both prior to but especially 13’s era really spent some subtext time building up the whole ‘The Doctor’ and ‘The Master’ are roles they play. If you know you know. We’ve been continuing on Chibs’s themes. Just reminding.

-The Doctor takes the male i.e. leading position judging by the other couples visible. As per traditional Thoschei.

-Lights dim in our usual diegetic/non-diegetic playing that we’ve been doing. Soft point to Pantheon - remember if The Rogue’s theme is Roleplaying it must be a double bluff for him to actually be being skilled at it, and he is cosplaying the Master cosplaying the Doctor, with the conceit that the Doctor gets this but not that it’s someone cosplaying the Master, thus he’s winning. If he is Pantheon this is the only potential evidence of fuckery besides having brought non-native-dimensional creatures into ours, which we do have other explanations for.

-“We need to have a big fight so one of us can storm out and the Duchess follow us.” “The Chuldur cosplay, not me.” Mhmm. You had D&D dice. But regardless if you buy that, we have now spontaneously swapped from engaging starry-eyed Personality B, back to Personality A: strong and silent.

-“How dare you my Lord! You would ask me to give up my title? My fortune? But what future can you promise me? *Rogue shaking his head, not good at deviations from the script, nor is the Master fwiw* ✅ “You cad! Tell me what your heart wants, or I shall turn my back forever!” “I…” Fifteen whispers, “Say anything.” If you are not internally writing the pre-show Doctor/Master fanfiction I cannot help you. Jo describing the Master like a jilted lover or whatever the hell it was. But at least here, with admittedly a little open-mouthed smirky smile, Rogue gets down on one knee and offers his ring. (From non-marriage hand, 4th finger, don’t completely see him pull it off but he was wearing it in the dance scene). If we are re-writing history with this cosplay, which given the Doctor’s reaction he certainly seems to consider it meaningful, that’s definitely what the Master would do here. ‘This is what I wanted you to do back then.’ ✅

-Obviously the Master has used that sort of flat-topped large round ring before, we’ve had the callback to it with the red-nailed woman and the tooth just recently. The insignia is not entirely decipherable. Most default I’ve seen is an angel (Master coding, especially if we’re wearing it upside-down hoo), I’ve also seen a ‘rod of asclepius with 3d coiling tails’ (A Doctor fanboy who has come prepared for this moment), and just plain bird of some kind given the little wings.

-The Doctor says a very genuine “Sorry I can’t- …I ca-” and runs off. (Which definitely happened the first time). This almost certainly isn’t River trauma, Twelve wore the implied wedding ring until it fell off when he regenerated. And we’re just supposed to be making a scene and this is an obvious way to do it - he’s already nearly kissed him and invited him, the Doctor put relationship on the cards, and could easily still be haha fun joke but you are still coming right? If it was just Yaz Making Everything Feel Like Touching A Hot Mind Stove then the near kiss feels like that would have been included in the trauma reaction. So presumably engagement based triggering specifically. Probably not from Cameca either. That had cocoa involved.

-Rogue seems a little surprised at this reaction. Fair all round, the Master might not have expected it either, but also the sort of thing a fanboy might not have been able to pre-empt - it wasn’t in the show after all.

-They actually join back together almost immediately and they run outside, so it wasn’t that overwhelming.

-“Oh, we must play them!” - no ‘aha’s’ from the peanut gallery, we already saw the birds can potentially not recognise each other in costume, and in the baddie camp (bird ship, he’s in a bird ship) we can be pretty sure that Rogue didn’t arrive here looking like Mr Darcy since none of the others were pre-costumed and just nicked people when they got here. (number 2 shows they didn’t pre-organise characters - “nice costume”). If Chulder #6 - nicked a guy. If Pantheon - conjured himself a bespoke Darcy form. If the Master potentially still body-stealing or simply we’re cloaked - remember the electronic interference from the start that pointed the Doctor to him specifically rather than the Chuldur? Dhawan!Master previously cloaked himself, plenty of scope there. (Why would the Master need to cloak? If the Doctor’s already familiar with his form. Either from other plans or the fact that, well, there’s a world where this could literally still be Dhawan!Master.)

-The Master nicks bodies by the way, for New Who-onlys. We haven’t actually done it for a while, and for earring interference reasons I don’t believe we’re doing it now, but it’s actually a Classic Who staple.

-“Now keep the Duchess talking, a Chuldur is strong, and if she starts to change you it won’t stop.” First, now that’s a meta, second, do we want to add a sketchy point for the gendering of the Chuldur? Cus we’ve seen one of them explicitly say they’re fine with different bodies (‘oh I wanted to be the Duchess’)? Hm. It’s an assumption on thin ice but I’ll allow it. We don’t ask Rogue why he knows so much about the Chuldurs considering they’re different dimension beings. There are non-problematic options there to be sure. But will say that Dhawan!Master was previously messing around with different dimension beings hoping to find out if they were what the Doctor was, got trapped in their dimension at the end, and these ones are literal shapeshifters. If it is the Master, he has plenty of reason to be here with them and know a lot about them. ✅ If he is a Chuldur, well, obvious reason.

-[Rogue now has his bag back on. This is why I believe it’s a costuming error it wasn’t on indoors just then - the TARDIS and real outdoor areas were obviously filmed in very different times and places, the fact the bag travelled to both is suggestive that it was clearly supposed to be a part of his outfit at this point. BTS: the indoor and outdoor scenes were obviously filmed at different times, (3 weeks of night shoots oof) they’re not actually walking in and out of the building. But it’s also a deliberate costuming addition after the ship because he wasn’t wearing it in the night scenes where he’s holding the Doctor at gunpoint or anything. Tl;dr - no bag before the “Wow” heelturn in the ship, carries bag after.]

-There’s not one but multiple of the Chuldur shapeshifters. A ‘family’ according to Rogue. (Who are playing two characters that are getting married. Oh Doctor-Master mirrors, never change). Something you’d think would be on the bounty hunter note - are you just getting paid for the first one? Can you claim extra if you make multiple runs? These are important questions. Or not.

-“I want to be the Doctor.” …How does she know it’s the Doctor? ‘Uh, the Duchess was introduced to him earlier.’ Yeah. The Duchess. Who died. Childur 1 was still the housekeeper when that happened. She knows who the Doctor is.

-Doctor-Master inverting with the “Run.” “I’m the one who usually says that.” Our beloved theme returns to us. Of course maybe it’s just the cosplaying self-inserting whatever could be any baddie by which i mean really only Pantheon or Chulder #6. Bird ship. The Master was literally cosplaying as the Doctor the last time we saw him, like physically in the Doctors clothes. And probably underwear. Does anyone in this essay smoke weed?

-“Breaking spines! Removing tonsils! Live vivisection!” Gallifrey Time Lords mirror previously engaged, re-engage plus Timeless Child. But we uh haven’t had them do any of that stuff yet and they already suck people dry (don’t. I think it’s meant to be a kind of bolus, if you know your birds of prey) so I don’t know why this line is here. Actually maybe I do - now they’re roleplaying playing scary beasts hunting prey, doesn’t mean they’re actually going to do any of those things. Removing tonsils stands out. …We have a rogue (can’t say that now. Odd?) line from Ruby at the beginning about falling over in front of a fit dentist, the Master’s in the Toymaker’s gold tooth, tonsils feel adjacent, it’s almost certainly just funny, and it is, but if that bangs any bricks together in someone’s head go to town.

-I think the “breaking spines! removing tonsils! live vivisection” line is there to showcase that they are roleplaying Baddies. Because while murdering, they have done literally nothing like that, and it’s the sort of silly thing a child would say when playing a monster trying to think of the nastiest things a monster could do). “We still have the big finale wedding to come. And then… London. We can play our games on a magnificent scale. Parliament first, then royalty. I can be King. And we can start wars with the French and the Spanish and the Portuguese, and everyone who doesn’t look British.” This is their spitballing Season Two. As another point to all being one character and that them being Secret Monsters may be accounted for in the game - Emily is always called Emily whether humanning or in bird form.

-The Doctor and Rogue hide in the carriages. (Matilda style). If you’re building that pre-show Thoschei story, hiding from Time Lords in a TARDIS was probably already there, but if it wasn’t, now it is. Or hurr durr hiding in a carriage is funny I don’t know.

-“Back to the house. We must advance with the wedding! That should get them out of hiding.” …Bestie? What does that mean? Why would that get what we were led to believe that you believe are ‘two random interesting people one introduced to you earlier as the Doctor’ out of hiding? They have skedaddled so as not to be eaten by birds, right? They’re gone, lassie, why would they come back? …Unless she already knew who a character called the Doctor was before they were introduced? And that the Doctor’s M.O. will bring him back? Cus they’ve been watching more than one show.

-We modify the transporter: “I can make this transport gate carry four.” “What if there’s more?” “Right…Six. Six maximum.” How convenient. Personally don’t feel that worry is realistic for the character to have (while acceptable to write), and that if Rogue was as he was originally portrayed, he would be saying “Worst comes to worst, I could always…” *lifts jacket* *Doctor has brief moment of distracted horniness* “Nobody is going to be shooting anybody.” But he’s so perfect pacifist for the Doctor so quickly, I guess he just never would. Of course if he’s on their side, especially if also a Chuldur, he’s not wanting to kill any of them.

-Also feels like a Dungeon Master-whisper in the ear the Doctor just goes with: What if there’s more birds? *sets it to 4* What if there were more. *immediately sets it to 6 skipping 5 entirely*. (We talked about Missy’s comment of there always being a way out being potentially meaningful re: the Master’s traps for the Doctor; and counterbalancing the Doctor giving them a way out ‘come with me don’t be evil’. This would be a fun thing to do with that. Trying to create and order a good story and satisfying conclusion based on the Doctor and other players’ choices - pure DMing work at its finest.).

-“And I thought I was interesting. A bookish little wallflower risking it all for a secret love… But you. You are wild, and brave, and rude, living a life of adventure” again you don’t have to be team Master to enjoy the Gallifrey mirror. The potential in these mirrors for the Master is mmm gorgeous and I’m so here for it. Going back in time to when One ran away with Susan and slapping him for not proposing because he would have come with you, we could fix the universe, we-

-Question, cus I’m bored and this has become sort of a general analysis essay: When the birds transformed there were at least some people inside who screamed, you hear them. …Why is the party still here and going on and everyone’s chilling. Eh maybe Dot And Bubble explained that. Or maybe it was delayed screaming at seeing the gays. That’d be a Time Lord mirror. A marriage proposal probably gets you arrested for public indecency.

-The birds speak English, French, and German. Or at least a few words thereof. Multidimensional telly and I’m surprised it’s got foreign channels? How anglocentric of me. *shakes head*.

-“This is the endgame, Chuldur’s leave no witnesses ((yes they do they just abandoned bodies everywhere)), they’ll slaughter everyone.” If he’s not a bad guy then why, why the fuck, did he spend about fifteen minutes fucking around and not shouting “If we don’t stop the Chuldur they’re going to massacre everybody the second they stop having fun! Yeah, I’m bringing the gun!” like you mention this now??? Of course he mentions it now, he’s building dramatic tension because he is like our favourite dramatic bitch. ✅

-R:“I’m sorry.” 15:“They got her.” Ruby cosplaying as a Chuldur cosplaying as Ruby (see you thought my Pantheon cosplaying as the Master cosplaying as Jack was too much - we did double-layering in the episode itself) enters the room. Rogue gives his line but immediately turns away and watches only the Doctor and his reaction (who stares for a moment then gets up and walks away). Autism collective that we all are, this:

is not an expression of someone whose heart is breaking for his new friend. Just so we’re clear. Which is an odd choice for a new love interest - no sympathetic pain, eyes closing, not even a pat on the arm. He’s just observing what the Doctor does, and then gets up and follows the Doctor out. ✅ If he’s a good guy (he’s not, bird ship) you’re not selling him well. And if he’s a bad guy turning noble, he doesn’t have that part down yet. (Also Rogue said he’d tried looking for Ruby but they’d locked the doors. They manage to get through the section they’re in just fine. YMMV. Not enough on its own imo).

-“Madam. Your Grace …Your Birdiness. I cannot sanction wedlocke…between creatures from Hell.” They let the vicar be the one with the banger line, damn. Only one with a spine. Dead obviously but getting a high-five from some angel out there. (Me turning that into a vicar’s reaction to being asked to wed the Doctor and Master, whatever the fuck they are.)

-Speaking of which, here we explicitly see a Chuldur kill a man and copy his outfit but not his face. The Chuldur. Have no difference. Between body. And clothing. *flashback the Not-Things, and Fourteen regenerating* If you weren’t sure they were mirrors, you should be now.

-“How long do they live for?” “Chuldur?” “Mhm.” *Rogue comes up from behind to stand alongside him where he can see him.* “They have a lifespan of about six-hundred years.” “Good, good. That’s a long time to suffer.” A slight negative in ‘this can be validly read as the Master’ behaviour, because this yields only a tiny expression change of a slight raise of eyebrows, not a wild-eyed smile, and I don’t think the Master’s been able to restrain himself that well since he was Delgado. God what that man could convey with an eyebrow. Also we’ve all agreed that the funniest thing is that the plan doesn’t even change, he just knows how long their torment will last now and is happy about it, and if you ever need to explain the horror underpinning the Doctor it’s that.

-Now this is a hell of a thing to reveal about yourself to your brand new love interest and companion. That you’re down for some serious torture. Thirteen went well out of her way to be a monster only when they couldn’t see her. (Works nicely as a soft threat though. ‘If you’re involved with killing mine, I will torture you til you die or the sun does’. Good to have boundaries in a relationship.)

-“Taste his inhuman scent.” - A) Nice double-meaning line considering *gestures above*, B) Confirmation she knew earlier the Doctor wasn’t human, and so combining that with the belief he would come back if they started the wedding…

-“And I am one of a kind.” “He is quite unique…” Hold this in your mind we’ll be back to it in just a minute. *

-The birds immediately recognise the transport trap, by name, and that there’s only one third of it. Which would make a lot of sense if Rogue and the birds’ ship are the same bird ship so they’ve seen it before. Can’t be that they’ve encountered Just A Bounty Hunter Rogue before - he ‘didn’t know’ there was more than one, there’s no visual recognition, and previously it led to an incinerator not something escapable from.

-That we don’t see presumably Rogue placing the other traps, not even a glimpse of someone shuffling in the background, is to me extremely interesting. Not only like with the Carla flashback scene, playing with the unseen, but perhaps critically that this certain someone might know where the cameras are…

-Were you going “why don’t they just take their shoes off” when they got stuck in the triform? Well makes sense that they didn’t now, right?! Cus we know now there’s no difference to them between their clothing and their skin! …Admittedly Ruby…hopefully is fine and as human…well maybe not human…hopefully she’s whatever she was at the start of the episode. I, uh, maybe would mark that down as a concern though.

-Ruby’s chemistry with Lady roleplaying #5 was rewarded by attempted murder as Emily sought to turn into her. That happens a lot here. Let’s not worry about them as the partner mirror for Doctor-Rogue. Or what just happened with Dhawan!Master and 13. If you consider ‘Poker Face’ to be obviously meta-relevant here but ‘I’m The Bad Guy’ not earlier, question yourself.

-* I told you we’d be back. “She smells like a Chuldur.” “Idiot! It’s a false scent from that cheap psychic jewellery!” - The Doctor smells unique but this doesn’t mean they aren’t palling around with the Master. We’re specifically given a reason for this to not be an issue and well, I guess that would explain why she gets earring interference when Rogue’s around huh? If they���re using the same technology. (Same goes for a Chuldur faking being a human etc.)

-Do I believe the Master could perform a fireman’s lift to yeet #5, yes surprisingly, he is actually physically strong, a fencer, rower, and it’s been noted before. (Ainley’s six pack haunts me still). Dhawan!Master in particular has lugged corpses. It’s only running he doesn’t do/have stamina for. However, do I think he would risk it in-situ just for cool points? Don’t know. However, for this free bit of mental torture to work, the final bird has got to be in the enclosure. If it’s not all or nothing, then of course the Doctor would release Ruby. To get the Doctor to have to choose either to kill his companion or the world? He would carry the earth like Atlas. ✅

And that’s what he immediately proceeds to do with no hesitation. ✅

“Doctor, press send. We’ve only got one chance.” “I can’t.” “Press. The button.” *The Doctor openly, loudly panicking* “It will send Ruby!” “No, Doctor, it’s fine.” “NO! No! No! No!” “If you don’t press send, the Chuldur will escape and Ruby dies anyway.”

The Rogue that you think is real is not doing this. Is not convincing the Doctor to kill his companion. He is taking out his gun, and shooting the struggling birds while they are still stuck to the glue trap. It’s not a nice thing. But it is the Heart Of Gold thing. But he’s not that. He’s just The Bad Guy. ✅

“They’ll kill us. Then this house. Then London. Then the world. You know that. You absolutely know it.”

He doesn’t. The Doctor doesn’t know a thing about the Chuldur other than that they are shapeshifters and what he’s seen. How does he even know what London is?? And he wasn’t there for the scene where the Chuldur said it themselves.

He can’t have logicked that out. There were a few deaths sure, but one housekeeper and a duchess not only isn’t ‘these are extremely dangerous and fast killing machines’-worthy, that leap doesn’t make sense.

It’s not even true in their possibly-just-roleplay Baddie Plan. ‘And we’ll start wars with x y and z and everyone who isn’t British! Bloodshed, cannons, gunpowder!’, like that is a lonnnnnnng plan. Like I said before this situation is no ‘we don’t have time to run away and regroup’ thing, they’re slow killers, and especially with Ruby with battle mode engaged she at least would be fine. But it’s that taking over London bit. Very specifically. He claims he hasn’t met them, doesn’t know how many there are, he’s not admitting to any prior knowledge of these guys. So the only way he comes up with that line is if he already knew what they wanted out of their campaign in the first place.

They have not yet proven any more dangerous than any human gunman, in fact less, they clearly can’t spray bullets, they kill one at a time and so far only people they’ve wanted the appearance of in some way. They have been in rooms crammed with people who survived the encounter. Are you going to have to leg it to the TARDIS to regroup? Yes. Would people die? Sure. But probably not her, she’s fast and has a battle bot controlling her movements. Multiple posh nobs have died already and we only got a little sad over the housekeeper. Our hearts will survive. The one putting the pressure on the situation is not the Chuldur. It’s Rogue. There is no time limit. No rush. It’s waiting for you to press the button on the Laser TCE- I mean control stick. But Rogue is not giving him a second to think. ✅

*Rogue approaches, step by step.*

“So can you do it?”

GUYS, your supposed hero is TORTURING the Doctor, who is fucking ugly crying his two broken little hearts out. ✅

“Can you lose your friend to save the world.”

‘I am very sane and staring at you in a normal way the normal amount. Choose to kill your friend yourself, or choose to allow the genocide of every person on this planet including her. I want to see you choose, choose, choose.’

“Ok, but what does anyone get out of killing these people? I mean I know they’re posh nobs and all that, but we found the housekeeper dead. I mean why would anybody do that?”

“Remember how we used to run through those streets as children? The alleys where we'd hide from Borusa as we skipped classes? All gone now. Come on, ask me why I did this.”

*Sobbing Doctor shakes his head, making his decision* [quietly] “No.”

*Rogue with hitherto unseen tenderness, wiping one of his tear away* “I know.”

No, he doesn’t! If he is a random fucking bounty hunter he does not in fact know that. He knows because he already knows the Doctor. From real life or from being a bad guy who just kind of likes to watch TV - which actually I guess does describe the Master✅✅

*Rogue kisses him. Because a tortured ugly crying Doctor is hot to him.* ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅✅

(If I need to explain why the Master snogging the Doctor here, or the fact that he genuinely loves him in his own twisted way, you can’t be helped, or maybe were just a Ten viewer when you were 8 so missed stuff, and have watched nothing else in the show and just stumbled back in here - go watch Twelve there’s Simm!Master in it for you, and Thirteen’s second series onwards).

Live ‘About To Be Ripped Apart By Murderous Birds In Another Dimension If She Even Physically Survives The Trip’ Slug Reaction. Ruby straight up like ‘well at least he won’t be alone’, babes we’re gonna get you some sertraline, a psychologist, it’s gonna be ok, you’re worthy of life, we’re gonna get you help, we have a therapy circle.

The grin and hoppidy-skip jump Rogue does here when they break for air and he’s holding the Laser TCE/controller is a level of happiness we have yet to see from Rogue. A still cannot do it justice. (40:17 - though if you’re going, may as well watch the whole torturing scene from 39:00). It’s a bit more than a wee smile.

Then Rogue leaps over and knocks Ruby out of the triangle! Something he could apparently have done at literally any time before or during torturing the Doctor to his breaking point!

Why can he do this when she is molecularly bonded to the floor? We don’t know! It’s not explained! But he clearly knows his fucking device doesn’t he?! Why didn’t he tell the Doctor at any point that it would be possible to get Ruby out with a thing called a matter exchange? Who knows?! Maybe it slipped his mind til the last moment? The Doctor being the one to take her place would sure have been an answer, but oh well!

‘Maybe he didn’t want to risk his life for Ruby’s unless he really had to.’ - Then that’s shit hero and love interest behaviour isn’t it! But since it says “Matter Exchange” I’m pretty sure he could also have knocked Ruby out of the triangle using that vicar corpse on the floor a few feet away, then neither would have to die! So he must be real sure he’s gonna be ok! ✅

He’s so happy and chill. The music is happy too. Rogue jauntily throws the bouquet - ahh look who’s next to be married *wink*. This is the happiest and funnest and most genuine he’s looked the entire episode. Almost like he got exactly what he wanted! ✅

“Find me.” *click*

Ruby you’re such a dick, why couldn’t you be as happy as him? If you’d trusted the Doctor to find you instead of you die by bird and/or dimensional anomaly before he got there this could have been such a peppy scene the whole time. It’s almost like Rogue is absolutely certain he’s not going to die doing this. You know I know a character who’s been transported to a different dimension at the end of his episode before and got out of that just fine! ✅

Almost like this was the end of a live D&D session he was hosting. That’s a wrap everyone, great job. Just imagine what I’ve got in store for us next week. Good thing the car transports all six of us together! Well done for not panicking, screaming, or interrupting what I had going on with the Doctor at the end, and trusting this wasn’t going to teleport you into an incinerator. Thanks for playing along, excellent improv as always, I’ll be marking your RP points highly.

And then the Doctor screamed “I’ll find you! I promise I’ll find you!” it was very romantic, and then he got out the sonic and started scanning everything for traces, anything, he was still upset and panicky of course, I mean his new love interest had just snogged him and given his own life to save Ruby’s. But Rogue had believed in him to do this impossible impossible task so he would. So he and Ruby ran back to the TARDIS as fast as they could, maybe she’d picked something up or *gasp* she was the one who configured the trap in the first place so maybe there would be a record of what random dimension she chose! Except she wouldn’t let them access it for some reason and she kept growling and the Doctor was crying with anger and-

No wait, none of that happened, sorry, not sure why I thought it did.

Actually the Doctor went to comfort Ruby and her comfort him, sombrely put the bouquet down where Rogue was. (And left the trap technology behind. So got engaged and invented a glue/tarmac trap.) The Doctor remotely sent the Bird Ship to orbit around the moon, “so it can wait…as long as it takes”. In the 19th century. …Babe, you know they can see the moon, right? They have telescopes. This is a mavity waiting to happen.

(Genuinely choosing not to think about how we last left Dhawan!Master messing about with the two moons in the 1900’s, I’mma be real, I don’t know what was going on and when there, hope it doesn’t fit in actually because I’m not gonna get it. If he’s the Master he turns up, that’s all I ever need to know.)

-“Can’t we use the TARDIS and go find him?” Ruby asks. Good question. If the TARDIS can determine whether a dimension is uninhabited or not that’s definitely gonna narrow it down. Maybe she could outright search for him? If she, you know, didn’t hate his moral void.

-“There are as many dimensions as there are atoms in the universe.” *Ruby arm cuddles* “Anyway! It is what it is, so onwards, fine, next.” So is it ‘as long as it takes’ or are you not even going to try and find him? That and the bouquet really feels like you’re giving him up for dead and just hoping he finds his way back himself some day. It’s not what you were told to do. You can wear that ring and salute the sky with a smile all you like. He said “Find him.” Bad fiancé behaviour.

Cus the thing is, here is the ‘uwu small bean Rogue’ paradox. If this is just a normal guy, he’s not making it back on his own. He’s dying to the birds. The Doctor isn’t looking for him, and Rogue clearly didn’t think he could return on his own - he says “Find me” not “I’ll be back”. So if you believe we’re going to see Rogue again…he’s going to not be a normal guy, but be the type who can survive and make his own way back from a wrong dimension surrounded by free murderous birds. *piano rendition of The Cat Came Back starts playing* ✅

But luckily he’s not normal. He’s a man/bird with so much forethought he knew he wasn’t going to be coming back to his bird ship and took whatever it was that can save him from a teleport trap from the spaceship with him in that bag. Always have a getaway plan. That’s Masterful thinking. Unless you just think he wanted his wallet and keys on him ✅ (Point against Pantheon though - pretty sure being able to move reality around doesn’t require props. But then D&D. Maybe he just likes props.)

-“Doctor, you don’t have to be like this.” “I have to be like this because this is what I’m like.” And in our story about roleplaying, shouting out our longtime theme of the most important roleplaying of all, that we follow a character who’d rather be called Lulubelle playing The Doctor™. Doctor Who is a show.

-The fires whole and reflected and internal everywhere, like our Gallifrey mirror is on fire.

-Final additional literal-meta that may be of interest: the costume designer said Ncuti’s outfit is designed as a nod to Three - the original Thoschei pairing origin. We canonise Shalka!Doctor - famously and frankly exclusively known as ‘that animated one who made a robot boyfriend Master to be his Companion’, with lines in the episode Cornell said was indeed intended to suggest a relationship there and would have continued had that pilot been picked up. Relevant or not we’ll see.

And to all those who read that and yet still think that I am just very cynical and mean, and he really does have a single heart of gold, he’s just got flat affect and is socially awkward and autistic maybe and-

His ship IS A FUCKING BIRD. OWL HOOTS.

🎉 You did it! You read the full analysis! Great job! You passed Media Overanalysis, Rogue Edition. I told you it was a 10K. Look at how much you just read that had already been effectively covered in the first minute with just one thing.

“I’m The Bad Guy. Duh.”

(‘I am now convinced, but do you have a blessedly far shorter essay about why a Chuldur/Pantheon The Rogue perfectly cosplaying the Master cosplaying Jack would be the way to go?’ Why yes I do, strawman.)

Assorted later Additions:

Pantheon!Rogue: Why the bird ship?

Maybe that’s why the ship’s so fucky actually, DM’s love their props, this is about playing D&D In The Real World, so maybe he got one originally, short hop standard Asteroid Hopper. but now they’ve just kept (perhaps Pantheon-magically) editing it over time as the campaign and rule of cool needed. Appearance, better space travel, time travel etc. “It should look like a bird!” “…Yeah! It should look like a bird! Great idea Emily, we’ll work that in!” Of course if he’s a Chuldur this is just…their ship. Maybe classicly upgraded.

What might Rogue’s original plan for the Chuldur’s live D&D Session supposed to have been:

We know they were going to have a big wedding, but maybe that they’re also Baddies going to take over the world muhahaha! Cus they went into that monster-playing real quick and also they said that the panicking and screaming is their favourite bit - so there must have been a plan to include that after the wedding part of the game! They thought the wedding would lure The Doctor out so there must have been nefariousness in it or else why would The Doctor be drawn out? They were playing Baddies! So, thinking like what our lead bird would want for a moment, if you were to DM that, maybe he’s both playing the bounty hunter sent to catch them …But maybe also was going to do an “I Object!” scene too. Their faces in that scene, they’re so excited. Let’s say Rogue doesn’t know the Doctor was coming in advance. He’s already got ‘I’m The Bad Guy’ playing if this wasn’t a live magical edit on seeing him. Oh, maybe that’s why he chose to look like Mr Darcy. Maybe he was going to woo one of them - a good reason to already have the ring. Cus a big wedding can’t go right, that’s not drama, that’s boring. We know he’s probably cloaked - not only do they not recognise him but we have Ruby’s earring interference pointed directly at him (same tech frequency problems?) and even mention the psychic jewellery’s ability to mask a scent with a false one. So he was an NPC just meant to turn up and add some of their beloved drama. So he’d woo a Chuldur, he’ll object and then he would reveal himself as a bounty hunter with his Big Glowy Gun and trap! It was a dastardly trick! You knew he was a Rogue and a cad all along, you just let yourself fall for his deceit! *teleports to ship rather than incinerator* BRO. Even the bird’s D&D plot would naturally be the ‘I was tricking you and am actually your enemy’ twist!

Post-Empire, The case for the Chuldur Phoenix: Rogue being (unbeknownst to himself) the Master cosplaying a Chuldur cosplaying the Master.

[wallapology]

Hey guys here’s a handy-dandy list for all of you to experience thoschei throughout the years

Theta and Koschei: toxic childhood gifted kid friends to lovers ez— outspoken extrovert and shy introvert who goes along with it

Adult Theta and Koschei: Newlyweds to Newly-Disastered to Newly divorced

Threegado: Corporate and/or academic frenemies. There is mutual respect there, and I respect that

Crispy/Four/Crispyainley: Gym bros that motivate each other “u good bro?” “No” to “glad you’re doing better man let’s swordfight”

FiveAinley: Man who is absolutely oblivious to all intentions of his ex (or, at least, pretends to be. And loves being a Bertie Wooster type)

SixAinley: “Oh god not you again” but its both of them so

SevenAinley: Typical hero/villain rivalry (not fun and or sexy)

EightRoberts/war stuff: That BUT they give each other space to live and grow as human beings happy for them

NineRoberts: I mean they didn’t really meet but goddamn would the pining after the master be fucking insane

That or he is just very mad

TenSimm: I don’t want to say yaoi. But. Yaoi with feelings and they’re specifically high schoolers who are both really into P!ATD and MCR and they thought their middle school relationship was waaaaay more serious than it actually was. Like this pairing was MADE for the people who have never actually found love

Twissy: Stockholm syndrome (I’m never gonna stop making that joke sorry about it)

Nah just kidding 100% old married couple

TwelveSimm/ Silver!Simm (fanon): Lowkey Simm is himself but grown up. He’s in his 30s-40s, still a little bitter from lack of connection, but is in a genuinely satisfying relationship for the first time; like a shelter cat finding his forever home, and 12 is somewhat annoyed but glad he’s come around.

Spydoc: They’re gym bros again but they’re on different teams and the guy from the other district is taking this race WAY TOO PERSONALLY, while the other one can’t wait for him to graduate and get off her ass

“Bro why is that guy throwing hurdles”

“Hes mad because he put himself on a training regimen all summer and I beat him out on the 100m by 2.5 seconds”

“… Did he tell you about the training??”

*sigh* “Yeah, he was texting me about it the whole time.”

“Why didn’t you block his number??”

“…. I don’t know? It’s kinda endearing to see somebody so pathetically lusting after you?”

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

praxeus. episode of all time. yaz episode of all time. radiating self-assurance, showing off all the things shes learnt, wanting the doctor to see how good she is at this. at playing doctor and loving it. relishing having the keys to all places, having Secret Knowledge of Alien Things that she is in no way about to share with either jake or gabriela because where would be the rush of power in that?

jake, the (ex-)copper on a sabbatical. "except i dont go telling people im police!" give it a year or two love and youre using this (ex-)title on each of your self-found companions. which youre practicing now for with gabriela, pretty girl to forcefully introduce to her very first alien planet. well, almost.

both the girl best friends who've known each other for 5 years and one of which dies exploding, and the uncommunicative married/separated husbands who are punishing each other or themselves, one of which, again, almost dies exploding, looking like thasmin from every angle. (looking like thoschei, too, further back. because thats whats behind every picture of thasmin whichever way you cut it)

watching the identities slip and slide changing hands between all these parallels. Adam, sick astronaut, experimented on by aliens, clear doctor figure. or is he? jake, on the beach, sits where the doctor sits, saying he doesnt do emotions, admitting to being purposefully unreliable, unable to commit, disliking travelling! jake who can be summoned with a "help me". jake, who doesnt believe adam could really love him. who are we to apply this sentiment to, then? obviously, both. obviously, all.

"we didnt teleport into an active volcano!" yaz exclaims, too surprised at her own success to really be reassuring, as she holds onto her new friend's wrist, not hand, steering, directing, controlling. "im supposed to be the one saying that to you," the doctor responds, a year or three (or six, for yaz) later, when the destination is an active volcano, when in all these years theyve learnt to fly a spaceship together ("adam lang, your job is so easy!") but still havent figured out how to say the things that need saying, when one of them is dying, and the last time yaz was still pretending to be on sabbatical she knew for sure how old she was. two girls roaming.

the doctor wants so badly to figure this out, needs this win, after the identity shock of ruth, all the unanswered questions. even after the betrayal, after all the bad thats been done. "look at us, suki! two brilliant scientists, we can fix this!" whatever you did, whatever youve done, in desperation, wasnt right, but it's not the end. you can fuck it all up, and then you can help to try and unfuck as much as you can. just think. do not get carried away by fear. thats what scientist means, in the thirteenth doctor's mouth. someone who realises problems have solutions. that can be found. if you delay your frightened desperate furious reaction and just think for a second. she wishes she and suki could have worked together. she wishes they could have saved her planet as well as earth. she wishes she could have sent suki home, safe and sound, with solutions for whoever is left there, waiting for her, desperate and afraid. they will never know what happened. they will die sick and in ignorance.

adam offers himself up. hes dying anyway. they need a clinical trial and he is a suitable body to test on. makes you wonder. the master did not tell us everything, and what he didnt we'll never know, but as graham put it "i aint the fantasist round here" (detective morse, by the way, is not a reference i knew, but from wikipedia this character doesnt seem much to match jake's vibes, the master (and/or doctor) however...) what sense of duty might the child have felt? what sense of duty might the child have been talked into? or is that too patronising a way to frame it? what loyalty to her adoptive mother, a scientist and explorer, an example that still loudly resonates in 13, first-time woman, and what loyalty to her adoptive planet, people? what was life like on prehistoric gallifrey? "sparsely populated" is all we get. nothing about the possible reasons. disease doesnt seem out of the question. why did tecteun leave? "dangerous, unsophisticated space travel". why do something so dangerous? just the quest for knowledge? or was there desperation? was there fear?

"maybe," the doctor says, "i'll never know". and tecteun replies with a phrase the doctor herself has tried to leverage against yaz: the journey of a lifetime. "what do you do, 'Doctor'? pick people up, take them with you? you adopt them, use them, for reassurance, for company. theyre your experiments just as you were mine."

could she have been something else? who knows. but adam offered. and before that adam trained. and adam stepped into a rocket. and adam let himself be shot into space. scientist and explorer. and we're all full of plastic, whether we know it or not. and the doctor's a romantic. which is to say an idealist, here for the lost causes, a virus to kill the disease of our own making. infectious, and aware of it.

[buggyboba]

Hi! I just wanted to tell you that your writing is amazing! Absolutelty no idea why there are so little likes and reposts. But please keep going! I'm a huge fan ❤

Especially I'm looking forward to your kinktober series with 10/14 Doctor and particulary this thing:

✦ October 27th | Honeymoon

● The Fourteenth Doctor x Reader

↳ ○ more domestic bliss, He takes you to a beautiful resort planet, and the night is perfect.

And more 10/14 Doctor in general! I'll be waiting for anything with him, you're just amazing!

Hi! Hello! Oh my god thank you so much <3! I dunno why the engagement isn't as large as I thought it would be. Some of the ones I wrote I was like "This is going to feed the girlies, gonna do those bigboy numbers," and they sure did not. Don’t get me wrong I am ecstatic any time anyone likes or reblogs anything of mine, because to me they liked it so much they wanted to share it with their friends, and that makes me so happy. I know everyone says write for yourself, and I do for the most part, but I also like seeing that other people like it too, I want to yap and scream and yell about what's happening, what people liked, what they want more of.  I do have a few theories on why, the main one is I am just a relatively new writer in the fandom scene (Like I think I released the first chapter of Surrender Your Mind in April or May, and up until very recently (the beginning of October) I have been focused on one main pairing, which was Missy x Reader, and from what I gather that’s not as big as Master x Reader, or Doctor x Reader, or canon pairings, and that’s okay. I actually was joking with my roommate who is a big Doctor Who fan, that I didn’t want to write strictly Missy x Reader for Kinktober, and wouldn’t it be funny if since I’ve been writing for the Master wouldn’t it be a fun little thing to write The Doctor too? He is the one that suggested River x Doctor and my little gremlin brain was like “But also Thoschei”  Turns out The 10/14 ones are the ones who have been doing the numbers, and even got me shouted out on a rec blog which was so thrilling for me. It's so wild to me in the best possible way, I love that everyone likes them so much! The actual thrill I get when I wake up to 10+ notes is so good, it starts my mornings right. It makes me do a little happy dance, I love comments too, at the beginning I wasn’t good at replying because I didn’t know fanfiction etiquette, still not sure about it, but I’ve started to talk back! I forget sometimes because I have a wild sleep schedule, and will wake up for like ten minutes, see I have notifications, and be like “Aw fuck yeah, I’ll reply later.” Spoiler alert I have ADHD so I know I mean well by saying that, but my brain says ‘out of sight out of mind’ and I am very sorry about that in general.  For Kinktober I also branched out to do some other canon characters, the Kate girlies showed up, and The Master (Simm & Dhawan!Master) lovers showed up and I love that so much! I’ve also been getting engagement with requests, which makes me so happy that people like my writing so much that they trust me with their ideas and concepts, to see my take on it.  I think doing kinktober, while it has been stressful because oh boy I was not actually ready to take on such a challenge, it’s been so good because I’ve had a lot of growth, found some new characters I really like, and have garnered a bigger reach, which means more people will get to see what wild things I write, and I can share more with people. Which at the end of the day, it’s just me, my laptop, my stories, and everyone who reads them. I want to continue sharing, and I will. I’m going to end up bleeding over some because trying to sit down and write is so hard for me sometimes. I will finish the majority of the ‘update’ list, the two trick-or-treat ones, and then all the requests I have (Shameless plug, they are still open, but I’m only going to take about 2 more), and then take a short break. I still have a Missy x Master x Reader one that I have been trying to write since last month. Surrender Your Mind is going to be 3 more chapters, so it’s 6 chapters altogether, but I want to go back and now that I’ve found my ground, I want to edit and redo some things.  But yeah, sorry for derailing there, I had a lot to say apparently. In conclusion, Thank you to you, and everyone else who enjoys my stuff, it is encouraging to get messages like this, comments, likes, and reblogs, because it tells me there are many more people out there who like what I do, and makes me want to keep doing it.  <3

[khruschevshoe]

Listen I know this is going to get controversial but these are my favorite ships for each Doctor:

Nine/Rose or Nine/Rose/Jack (refer to my OT3 post about Nine x Rose x Jack or just...all of Nine and Rose's character development for Season 1 for reasons)

Ten/Martha (but like Season 4 Ten/Martha after they are on more equal footing/the Doctor has realized how he fucked up, they would have been legendary)

Eleven/Amy/Rory (in that sweet spot post-Season 5, pre-God-Complex)

Twelve/Missy (this is the one version of the Thoschei ship that could actually work out long term, and though I love the batshit deranged energy of TenSimm and SpyDoc, this is the variation I think complements each other best in not just their feral energy/foils to each other, but also in their genuine understanding of each other and devotion to each other)

Thirteen/Jack (I really want to say Thasmin but Thirteen/Jack fascinates me so much you have no idea, all of that history, all of that guilt and outsurviving everyone and understanding each other like no one else does...it's a ship that lives mostly on headcanon but hey, most Doctor ships live mostly on headcanon)

(And this isn't even getting into my non-canon ships for the magical universe where continuity between showrunners could have worked... R.I.P. to Eleven x Rose, Twelve x Martha, and Bill x Thirteen)

[do-minuzz]

so let's look actually realistically at thoschei ship

and in realistically I mean looking with all the EU stuff that happend between them, because yeah that's basically the main conflict stuff

be careful there's a lot of words that I wrote without thinking twice lmao

why thoschei isn't canon yet?

so from the doctor's point of view I think the main reason is that he just cannot morally accept master as the way he is, not only due to his cunning nature which just cannot flow in the same stream with him, but also due to doctors morality codex which is fully conflicting with masters

and what hurts me even more is that it's fully doctors fault. which doctor also feels guilty of, but he never acknowledges it nor wants to because welp, doctor is a coward and that's it. he's afraid that it will eventually turn him into something else than doctor - doctor is supposed to save others, not running around with local universal criminal with weird principles

when we look from the master's point of view it's very different. master is just STUCK with doctor. he doesn't have anyone to kneel on, just no one who would be actually interested in him and no one who would give him admiration and understanding. it's so fucking horrible to be honest.

only doctor was able to do so, they had similar paths, and master was fully trusting him, and then doctor did a lot of things which resulted in betrayal. and master just didn't turn evil. hot take: master NEVER was evil and NEVER will be evil. It depends on from which eyes we're looking for.

if we're looking from the doctor point of view yeah, master is evil thats it. he's immoral and evil.

evil and good is a question of perspective.

so master did not turn evil for EVERYONE alright, he was just evil towards the doctor because of betrayal, and if you think about it - everything what was master doing eventually led to doctor

was it intentional? yeah, at the beginning of it

but with time that line just got blurred and he's doing everything instinctively.

and when there's no doctor around for thousand or so years, master isn't so «evil» anymore. he's just... koschei.

so with this I can say that the identity of master was created by doctor himself. there's SO MUCH more to it that I could write a fucking essay thirty pages long just describing all the shit they caused to eachother lifes (please god just let them reduce to atoms I swear-)

so for the thoschei to be canon(i mean healthy and almost fully established) we need a doctor who's not considering himself a doctor anymore.

luckily we have one! it's 14th :DDD

and we need a master who's not in need anymore to get admiration and awe from doctor using rage and a lot of killing in process involved

which could be anyone if doctor is able to redeem himself in eyes of master, redeem all this betrayal, give up his title

and then master will not have to run and kill everyone on sight because well... doctor-not-doctor-but-a-friend-from-distant-past is here. he's available and free™

and then they'll be able to start again from almost scratch

but through giving up themselves and building up again together.

so the main point of all this shit: saxteen is canon XDDDD

but actually I'm going to explore this deep further later in my fic for sure.

[valdomarx]

Favourite DW audios ft. the Master

The extended Doctor Who canon can be a bit of a maze, but if you love the master and want to listen to some of the audio stories about them then I have recs for you!

Masterful. A silly story with all of the masters (pre-dhawan) meeting each other and, as you can imagine, not getting on well. Featuring such delights as simm!master and jacobi!master bickering in a car, crispy!master finding love at last, missy as the ultimate agent of chaos, and simm!master trying to persuade other versions of himself to join him in an orgy.

Master Thief / Lesser Evils. Two stories featuring delgado! and ainley! masters, read as audiobooks as both actors have sadly passed away (RIP). These are technically part of the (rather complicated) Timelord Victorious event, but they work as stand alones. A quick glimpse into the mentalities of the earlier versions of the Master.

War Master: All of it. The whole series. A gem from beginning to end. No I will not shut up about this until everyone has listened to it. Legendary actor Derek Jacobi having the time of his life as the most terrifyingly competent version of the Master, causing strife and pain everywhere he goes because he likes it. You say Be Gay, Do Crime, but who is out there living that philosophy like the war master???

(If you force me to choose a favourite from War Master, both Only the Good and Anti-Genesis are tremendous boxsets. My fellow thoschei folks will want to check out Rage of the Time Lords and Hearts of Darkness as well.)

Mastermind: Really fun story showing how the master psychologically manipulates people. The crispy!master is locked in a cell in the UNIT vault, and two guards are charged with making sure he doesn't escape. Big Hannibal Lecter vibes.

Master: Thoschei chaps, are you ready to get fucked up? However messed up you imagine childhood on Gallifrey might be, it's so much worse than that. This is also a tremendous ghostly spooky dinner party story which is full of tension and believably teases the potential of redemption for the master... and shows why that redemption will never stick.

The Lumiat: Talking of redemption - have you ever wondered what the master would be like if they were an unbearably chipper goodie-goodie lady? Poor Missy has to put up with hands down the most sickeningly wholesome regeneration of herself. Highly entertaining.

And You Will Obey Me: Another entry in the "wow crispy!master sure is manipulative and awful huh" series. This story has him going up against the fifth doctor which I find fun. (cut to me holding up an idiot in a cricket jumper: I Just Think He's Neat.)

The Same Face: This is mostly on the list because i love jo grant. But it's also a nice little story audiobook about regeneration, other rogue timelords, and delgado!master doing his mischevious thing. A quick short trip that's worth a listen.

This is just a small selection of my favourites from a massive amount of canon, so there's a handy masterpost here if you want a list of every audio that the master has appeared in to date. And sacha dhawan will be getting his own series (two of them!) soon which i cannot wait for!

[micahdotgov]

21/22/23/24/25/13 for dr who? :)

woah this ended up longer than i thought it would be i'm putting it under a break. thank you for asking!

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

okay keep in mind im saying this as someone who hasn't finished classic who yet so i may change my mind but im afraid i dont care that much about gallifrey and time lord society... i definitely prefer it when the doctor isn't involved with the time lords i thought it would be exciting finally seeing gallifrey but i dont care about it as much as everyone else seems to

22. your favourite part of canon everyone ignores

im actually not sure what to answer for this one i think every part of the show i like i see talked about by the people i follow i think im in too much of an echo chamber to answer this lol

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

this is going to sound crazy to all of you but its thoschei and specifically tensimm. i know. i was originally a die hard ten/jack fan who did not like simm!master i have ancient posts about thinking tensimm shippers are freaks i dont know what the fuck happened. ig i woke up one day and was like nvm this rules i love pain and misery and i never looked back

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

thankfully i dont see dr who discourse fairly often and when i do its just like. people arguing about clara. but i have seen some crazy discourse about amy abusing rory???

25. common fandom complaint you're sick of hearing

"chibs is bad and thirteen was bad and the timeless child was bad" two of those are very much true but ive reached a point where its like okay guys i get it you all hated everything made in the past five years but we've said all there is to say lets move on

13. worst blorbofication

lately i have been seeing a increase of woobifying simm!master and its driving me a little crazy to put it simply some of you do not want him to be an evil crazy murderer and are pretending he is a completely different character so you feel okay calling him babygirl

[here-be-bec]

20 QUESTIONS FOR FIC WRITERS

thanks @commanderfoxdeservesbetter for the tag!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

105! hit 100 over febuwhump.

2. What is your total AO3 word count?

167,182!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

star wars: the clone wars is the main fandom, but i've also written some stuff for alex rider! and a few gift fics for jedi fallen order, marvel, and doctor who.

4. What are you top five fics by kudos?

no. 1 is 'connection is what saves us' (which makes me happy, because it only recently overtook second place and i like to see a fox-centric whump fic on top).

no. 2 is 'the food's too sweet'.

no. 3 is 'an acceptable loss'.

no. 4 is 'no stranger to guilt'.

no. 5 is 'dead men feel no guilt for dying'.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

yes! sometimes it might take a few days, but i always love the opportunity to ramble about my fics some more!

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

given that 99% of what i write is whump, this one is a tricky one. if you hate major character death then i recently started writing a few fics for the 'kill a character bingo' prompts. but if you, like me, believe in fates worse than death, then i would probably say 'cut abruptly short' had the angstiest ending (lining up with canon in terms of the tragedy of order 66, with an added element of angst from the theme that i used for the fic - "force sensitivity as horror").

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

another tricky one! because despite everything, i've realised that i've actually been pretty good with at least writing a hopeful ending into my fics. so with that in mind i'm going to take the opportunity to plug my favourite (only slightly angsty at the start) crack fic of all time, 'follow the leader'. perhaps the happy ending is more implied than explored, but still, :D

8. Do you get hate on fics?

nope!

9. Do you write smut?

not at the minute, i suck ass at writing romance so it would probably only ever be part of some depraved angst bs.

10. Do you write crossovers?

not yet, but i have a few that i'd like to take a stab at one day, if the inspiration strikes. bioshock, batman, doctor who... many possibilities.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

luckily, not that i'm aware of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

i am currently co-writing a fic, but it is a long way off from being published! really really looking forward to sharing it, though, it's going to be a beautiful combination of angst, crack, and time travel :D

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

i don't really ever ship anyone! it just isn't my cup of tea, usually, unless the ship is dangling the carrot of angst in front of me. the only ship i'd say that i ever enjoyed exploring was thoschei (the doctor/the master) from doctor who. lots of potential for a supremely fucked up or fun dynamic, haha. i suppose i should also mention shadowgast from cr2, i was rooting for that throughout the part of that campaign i watched live.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

well if you want the nice answer, i'll say the isolation au as a whole, but that's because i don't think i'm going to run out of ideas for it any time soon! if you want the less nice answer, then i have been struggling with the long fic sequel to 'dead men feel no guilt for dying' for over a year now. i have loads of cool scenes outlined and fun ideas, but still haven't been able to settle on an overarching plot that i like! it's very annoying. massive kudos to multichapter fic writers!

16. What's your writing strengths?

i think i do well with structuring my fics. i enjoy figuring out how to write things that flow together, or mirror other scenes. one of my favourite fics to write was 'reiterate, relearn', which i think is a prime example of this!

17. What's your writing weaknesses?

hate writing dialogue! very rarely does it come naturally, which i think is because i characterise everyone sliiiiightly different in most of the fics i write, depending on the au that they're in. most of these guys also don't have much in the way of canon dialogue to go by!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

hahaha, mando'a is really something i should have tried to incorporate more of! i like it as a fandom/legends trait for the clones, but it would require me putting actually thought and planning into my fics.... and alas!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

if we're counting before i knew fanfic was a thing, i guess it would be pokemon mystery dungeon oc fics in a notebook when i was like, 8. if you're talking fic that i've intentionally written, is was for the jse ego fandom; a bit of a niche community surrounding certain arg-like videos by jacksepticeye!

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

oh boy.... too many choices. as a i say above, i think 'follow the leader' was definitely one of my favourites to write, but i think my favourite as a whole has to be 'in thanks they will keep him forever'. not putting something from the isolation au here was a tough call, because those first three fics were genuinely a blast to write, but 'in thanks' was such fun to plot out, and so self indulgent - wait! that means i totally have done a crossover fic, technically! but i won't count it, because 'in thanks' only contains a single monster from doctor who, adapted to star wars for coruscant guard horror purposes. as i say, very niche, very self-indulgent, and i definitely i want to write more stuff like it in the future!

----------------

okay, this was a bunch of fun, i always like the excuse to read back through old fics! if @stardustloki, or @amberskyyking want to do this, or anyone else who thinks this looks fun, then here you go!

[heatwa-ves]

For the character headcanon ask game!!!! Firstly, the Tenth doctor as I like that guy and secondly,,,, Klavier or Kristoph Gavin or both because they are just so epic to me,,,,,

under the cut because I talked a Lot

ten

sexuality + gender: canonically genderfluid yippee!! as for sexuality idk. rose tyler.

fav ship: tenrose u will always be famous. tensimm you will be famous too I guess because what the fuck was. Everything. in the end of time. not my fav incarnation of thoschei but I do enjoy it . "you could be beautiful" doctor do you have something to share with the class.. OH. TENJACK ALSO. I am perpetually haunted by the scene in utopia wjat the hell is this

fav platonic relationship: doctordonna is LEGENDARY. they're so good they're sooooooo good. entirety of S4 is banger after banger after banger I'm excited to watch the 60th specials and see donna and dt again but im still dragging myself through chibnall era. It's bad.

general opinion: I used to like ten more than I do now not that I dislike him but watching twelve set a gold standard for doctors and I think none of the others quite reach it. am I biased because I'm obsessed with peter capaldi? No comment. anyway. ten is really good and has a lot of strong episodes particularly with donna ofc. I like his relationship with martha in theory I just wish the show didn't hate her guts . Midnight is one of theeee best episodes on television and ten is so good in it he's also particularly good in waters of mars tho I do wish the time lord victorious was dragged out a bit longer like for another episode or so before that finale. His regeneration never fails to make me tear up especially the part with rose... she WILL have a good year. sobs. Finally obligatory mention that fear her is a GOOD EPISODE IM SICK OF THE HATE.

klavier

sexuality + gender: bi + genderfluid she/her pronouns would solve all her problems

fav ship: klapollo I love u... t4t

fav platonic relationship: his relationship with trucy they're sooooo silly look at this art . also obsessed with what we see of his relationship with kristoph I'm thinking about them always and I wish we saw more

general opinion: she's my fav from aa4... No one is surprised. cute + silly + has problems + sees the protagonist and is like omg hi. did you know I'm bisexual. did you know im really into you . just saying. 0.5 seconds after meeting. I would like it if the game went more into his feelings on losing kristoph and then daryan and then kristoph again all back to back but I guess that's what fanfiction is for. guilty love is such a good theme I don't normally listen to just instrumental songs but.... She's beautiful. the concept of the gavinners is fucking stupid so I'm living in my dream world where they're a normal band not a weird law cop themed one.

kristoph

sexuality + gender: idk nothing in particular .

fav ship: he and phoenix definitely fucked at some point

fav platonic relationship: once again gavin siblings. I wish the game also went more into how his relationship with apollo is like I assume they were working together for a while pre 4-1 .. it's interesting to think about but there's not much to go off

general opinion: beautiful evil man. I love him and it really surprised me how many people hate him??? the godawful mischaracterisation I've seen on ao3 haunts me like yes he's a cunt but he wouldn't fucking do THAT. he's a cunt in a different way. please hate him correctly at the very least. I want to know what goes on inside his head. he was definitely lying about why he killed zak there was more to it than just being a petty bitch like the black psyche locks and everything... I don't think he's the sort of person who'd resort to serial murder over just not being chosen as lawyer there's definitely things he didn't tell us. I like him. he's also kind of stupid like if he just hadn't tried to be all poetic describing the cards in the first trial he never would've been caught??? and come on now why is he using the same fancy rare nail polish that he poisoned as a gift. If he hadn't used it they couldn't have proved he gave it to vera. I could not fix him but I could fuck him.

[emptyofdust]

Tag Game - First 10 Lines

Rules: share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics and  tag ten people. If you have written less than ten, don’t be shy and  share anyway.

hi @picnokinesis and thanks for the tag! let's pretend it hasn't been an entire month since you tagged me, and that i didn't spend a whole 15 minutes trying to remember my password to this account before giving up and resetting it. sounds good? sounds good.

i don't exactly have 10 doctor who fics, i don't think? we'll see how far we get with the wips floating around my onenote, and if it's not 10, i'll pad it with other fics -- it'll be a guess the fandom sort of thing, fun for the whole family (although, if you do guess the fandom from one line, i'll be genuinely impressed). starting with the completed ones:

you're the one that i need, i'm the one that you loathe ; nebulously mid s12 thoschei one-shot

“I think it should be me who kills you.”

2. it makes me who i am (i burned it all but i'm doing fine) ; canon divergence where 13 thinks to dive into the matrix mid s12 and sort of uh. breaks her own mind, it's fine, she's alright. thoschei one-shot.

She stands alone, and watches the flames dance.

3. on the catfish and its adaptive capacity in adverse temporal conditions ; you guessed it, mid s12 thoschei one-shot. 13 pays a visit to O for ScienceTM. it doesn't go great.

This is arguably not the most brilliant plan the Doctor’s ever come up with.

and now for the wips. titles are temporary and, were i to finish any of these, would probably change 3-6 times before actually being posted

4. i've loved you for a hundred years (certainly fucking feels like it) ; human au spydoc one-shot that got away from me a bit and that i never ended up finishing.

There's a star in his kitchen.

5. the enemy of my enemy, and other cautionary tales ; i don't even know what this was going to be, but it was going to involve a team-up with Jack and the Master, and some shenanigans. maybe even some hijinks? hard to say.

"So," Jack says, wondering why the hell he's still standing here, "explain to me again why I should care?"

6. driving lessons ; a tentatively thasmin one-shot set between s12 and flux, exploring how yaz learnt to pilot the tardis as well as she has, aka 13 teaches her something instead of apologizing every time she behaves like a dick. might still finish this one, actually

"Want me to show you how to reset the chronion collector brackets?"

7. help is on the way ; a jack/13 one-shot set after once, upon time, because how could i not bring jack into the aftermath of whatever the hell happened in that episode

She holds it together for a remarkably long time, all things considered.

8. another night and i'll see you (another night and i'll be you) ; power of the doctor one-shot, exploring whatever the fuck happened with that doctor/master combination. got distracted from it, but honestly would like to go back to it at some point because seriously, the implications

He— she— they— are bleeding.

the other doctor who wips are not at a stage where they have opening lines, so bonus round!

9. a day in the life, and other team building exercises ; okay, this one's an easy fandom guess, but it's not about to be posted any time soon, so shouldn't give me away

"Warden," Camilla says, with all the neutrality only a lifetime can teach, "is that a knife?"

10. quick study ; teaching one's teammate to drive when one's teammate also happens to be an alien with a bit of a kleptomaniac streak

"This just seems so unnecessarily complicated."

and that's 10! this was very fun, thank you again for the tag! I don't really have many mutuals on this account, but if you see this and are interested, consider yourself tagged! i love reading these tag games