#Ruby Empire

[ghost-of-a-vulture]

This is it. This is my last fucking straw

[alternativeulster]

IT'S OKAY TO LEAVE YOUR DOG IN A HOT CAR

[paintdoktahwho]

this time he died. because of reasons

[ovenproofowl]

i'm dying over that reveal. truly. truly. because on paper, the concept that ruby's mother was just an ordinary person and what made her so special was this belief everyone had feeding into her own mythology, creating something larger than life, is actually pretty cool. and, yeah, from wild blue yonder we know the doctor absolutely handed the power of suggestion over to an unknown entity that made it something tangible.. so it works.

sort of

but like. that 15 year old girl decided to drop her baby off at a church in the middle of the night in the most ostentatious, medieval looking cloak and then proceed to point mencingly at the road sign on the off chance the security camera would pick her up and that would somehow give someone the idea to name her daughter after said road sign??

i'm just saying... if that's the way you handle giving your baby up for adoption then there is absolutely nothing ordinary about you

[raethereptile]

Donna's ability to miss everything has struck again. She is out-of-office and the world is ending. Donna, you work for unit now. How does this keep happening.

[hey-there-22]

I love how the TARDIS had a human form with eleven and she was like "my thief, my thief, I love my thief" BUT FAILED TO MENTION THE GOD OF DEATH HAD BEEN IN HER BACK FOR DECADES.

[tinkerbitch69]

You know what… kudos to the doctor for fixing Ruby’s abandonment issues before abandoning her. Closest thing to considerate he’s ever been, probably.

[shewolfofvilnius]

Doctor Who since the 2023, specials

(Edit: Note i posted this originally before the finale)

[an-american-whovian]

[momolady]

I’ve never gotten to really write out the religions within the Ruby Empire. But since Maradon and Ari exist, it always struck me that the RE had deities like mythology. Real and powerful beings that can come down to humanity. Mythri, Chiyo, and Katrina are even deemed reincarnated goddesses. So I’ve always always thought the deities, in some way, can be born or can slumber until they find new life. I would love to be able to put this into words much better. But also maybe the various religions in the RE are based around what individual deities reign there.

[koschgay]

okay. here’s how us eldritch Ruby Sunday truthers can still win.

let’s be honest. that episode Didn’t Explain Some Shit. why bring up the TARDIS’ perception filter only extending 73 yards? why gloss over Ruby being able to make it snow? why does she have Carol of the Bells stuck in her soul?

well. what if a scared 20 year old oblivious to her godlike ability to create stories from thin air literally wished her own mundane origin story into life?

no need to think about the creepy implications of the snow and the song. no need to wonder where a 15 year old single mother got a fancy hooded cloak from. no need to worry why she pointed at the lamppost like some kinda horror movie demon. it can all go away if she just wishes hard enough.

so, ruby’s got a nice normal birth mother now :) a normal woman who totally wasn’t willed into existence so the god of stories could stop having an existential crisis about her past :)

[heavensententhusiast]

Sutekh in flatline:

[dandelionjack]

We Invest Things With Significance, or: Why Sutekh Isn’t Sutekh, But Death Itself. alternative title: Fear Is the Mind Killer.

the Doctor Who Series 14/1 thesis statement

i don’t think that sutekh has literally been attached to the TARDIS since Pyramids of Mars. i think that the salt at the edge of the universe — the grievous mistake that caused all myths to become a reality — was what made him appear. and he’s not the same character as sutekh the osiran, a powerful alien that delusionally believed himself to be a god. he *is* a god. nuwho-Sutekh is Death Incarnate.

ergo, this version of Sutekh is the literal psychic manifestation of the Doctor’s deep-seated, guilt-motivated fear of the idea that his arrival brings death wherever he treads. this death-anxiety was turned into a physical presence, haunting the TARDIS all through the Doctor’s timestream, because of the salt. that’s the reason why the Doctor didn’t spot any Susan Twists before Wild Blue Yonder…

there are two timelines in Doctor Who — relative time and universal time. universal time is the history of the universe. relative time is how the Doctor experiences it. in universal time, Sutekh has supposedly been hitchhiking through the vortex for millenia. in relative time, he has only been doing so since Fourteen accidentally invited myths back into the world.

the Doctor was insecure and afraid and believed the above quote (from the very first episode!! spoken by the very first named character in nuwho to die on screen, no less!) to be true. but until WBY it had only been true on a symbolic, metaphorical level. myths, legends, concepts and stories becoming real after the salt caused the Doctor’s anxiety about being a death-bringer to take the shape of a black dog — a universally recognised symbol of death — wearing the name and voice of his most formidable enemy, Sutekh.

in a way, this plotline mirrors The Woman from 73 Yards similarly being a manifestation of Ruby’s worst fear — that of being abandoned by everyone she loves for something intrinsic and incorrigible inside her that she cannot change. Ruby fears being left completely alone, so “The Woman” causes everyone in her life to leave her. the Doctor fears that his coming always heralds mass destruction (“maybe i’m the bad luck”), so “Sutekh” makes sure that the TARDIS literally becomes an altar of death.

ever since Wild Blue Yonder, stories in doctor who have become sources of immense power. the worst, most potent stories we tell ourselves are the lies that our sick brains whisper to us — secret anxieties that we’re not good enough, that all our loved ones will inevitably leave, that we carry nothing but bad luck in our wake. what better clay to mould a monster from than the protagonists’ own neuroses?

and if anybody’s still in doubt, here’s the plain text, all laid out below:

we invest things with significance. that’s what the salt at the edge of the universe really meant. that’s what almost every episode this series has been about, thematically — the imaginary kastarions, the cosplaying chuldur, the bogeyman written into life because kids need a scary story. myths become real to us because we believe in them, love and death and monsters too.

[hellsw0rth]

Ruby’s birth mother naming her child

[doctor-who-cares]

I love how the Doctor told Ruby that she changed him and he's grown, only for it to instantly be shown otherwise. A blonde telling him she loves him only for him to turn, unable to express his actual feelings to anyone. He's come all this way, but in a second he's right back where he was nearly 20 years ago.

[blackbird-brewster]

Empire of Death, a Summary.