#barbie meme that i couldnt do back then

[fukirvana]

herrschers in crime

[moonybemine]

WHO WANNA BE BESTIES‼️ i need someone to giggle over hp with. you HAVE to be a jkr hater tho bc i hate terfs and am agender(im just vibin tho all gendered terms i use by vibe alone)

MINORS DNI

i have some Opinions on a lot of things about hp and i have some fluctuating emotions on certain characters. i genuinely treat every hp character like barbies that i play with and put into Shenanigans and Situations.

i will reading bashing fics especially albus ones i hate the things he did but i on occasion have been known to enjoy a good albus fic including ones where he's less "we have to kill voldy!!" and more "you (platonically or romantically)Love someone, dont you Tom?" like that spongebob meme. i do not like sirius or remus bashing, it's always overly harsh and vilifies a man locked away in the harshest prison who's mental faculties have been horribly abused, and while The Prank was an incredibly stupid attempt of a prank due to the danger it put severus in and also remus i ultimately believe it would've never happened in the first place if albus and minerva properly chastised the marauders earlier for their treatment of snape. we also don't know when this happened in the timeline of the marauders, was it before or after snape and lily's falling out. in remus' case he's a man who's been treated as a monster his whole life who was allowed into hogwarts by albus who then used this BOY'S gratitude to make him go into enemy territory and spy on and try to recruit people to the other side of the war. not to mention that albus groomed them all to fight the boy he FAILED(ive got so many opinions on tom and albus) and then when remus who support network was either dead or imprisoned he was told he couldn't raise harry and was told to not contact him. albus did all he fucking could to make harry miserable and pliable so that he'd sacrifice himself to end a war like a pig to slaughter. ur telling me Great Albus Dumbledore defeater of grindelwald couldnt find a solution to the horcrux besides having him walk to his death not to mention that he could've probably figured out horcruxes decades earlier and tried collecting them and probably would've succeeded! also i hate that the whole marauders generation is completely wiped out jkr u nasty bitch!

my ultimate fav ships are nottpott and wolfstar. ive BEEN a wolfstar lover since i was literally a child. nottpott entered my life last year and proceeded to ruin me on drarry(and pretty much every other ship involving harry and someone else or theo and someone else) i used to hate dramione bc i was apart of a toxic forum back in the day but i have grown to enjoy it bc it usually goes hand in hand with nottpott. i am forever a fremione and a pansmione gurlie tho. i love a lot of marauders ships as well jegulus/jily/jegulily/wolfstar/marylily/dorlene/pandalily/rosekiller/etc

i will mention i have dipped my toe into tomarry. i have enjoyed quite a few fics with this pairing and while i have enjoyed mostly ones where they are both teens, i do not like or support ones where its oldie voldie and literal child harry. its a grey area with somethings with them because of a multitude of factors and it shifts from a fic to fic basis. im not one to judge overly harsh over liking ships but i will judge in cases of straight up pedophilia but it will mostly result in a block because im not a child that starts fights on the internet anymore. i also do not support bestiality or incest and i'm specifying these things in particular due to a intimate relationship with the harry potter ao3 tag i know what freaks and weirdos exist there. literally the only fuckin fandom thats got a UNIQUE BESTIALITY tag

anyways msg me if ur interested <3

[lebonah]

===========

🫤

First of all, I wanna say it made me sad to see you are in this situation. I hope It gets better for you, I have no Idea how, but...

You're absolutely right. The way USA applies capitalism is slavery.

Not to make you more pissed but just for a comparison, I just graduated from college here in Brazil. I never had to pay for anything. We do have private expensive universities but we have our Federal Public ones and that's what I went to. It's payed with tax payers money (partially). I'll never have to pay for anything. Brazillian's educacional system is not the most perfect (teachers are underpaid and some of the universities have structural problemas, but at least in the state I live we do have a good one (UFPA)). So it's possible to have good education for free, but whoever controls this system in USA is certainly profiting of it.

The last brazilian goverment (Jair Bolsonaro and his Trump ball's lickers) tried to end those universities and force us to the American system. We fought back. Protested hard. They gave up (It was not constitucional anyway). We grew up understanding that education is our basic right - It is in our constitution.

I truly Hope one day It changes for you all, not just this but the whole system. Brazil is not perfect but we are trying. It's time the US government at least tries. All the money spent in the military, if put to education, would be more helpful not only for americans but the rest of the world.

And If nothing works, come to Brazil.

Ps: Come to Brazil is a meme. But if one comes in peace our doors are always opened. 🩷

PS2: because of the government of president Fernando Cardoso in 1996, we saw brl (brazilian real, our currency) slowly devaluating. In 1995, one real was equal to 95 cents of a dollar. In 1996, It was 1:1. From there to now, one Real is about 5 dollars. So you can imagine how I still couldnt get my Barbie the movie Doll yet. It's about 600 Real here. :/ We may get good free education but our economics still have a long way ahead to be fixed.

PS3: the government of Lula just started appling a import tax that makes us pay, in theory, 60% of the original products price (but most of my collectors friends told me they are being forced to pay 100%). So no way I could get the Doll imported. It's hard to collect dolls in Brazil too, just not for the same reasons that op have.

And by the way, the government excuse was to "stop scams, counterfeits and increase Brazilian productions/Sales of products", but Barbie IS NOT EVEN PRODUCED HERE. 😡 🤡🤷🏼‍♀️ If the money from the tax goes to education though, I'll be fine with it (but still wont be able to afford dolls).

Death of a hobby

This is a long, angry politics post.

In the U.S., we like slavery, yeah? Country founded on it, built by it, fought a civil war over it, passed some laws and constitutional amendments around it. Slavery is the economic engine that makes this country wealthy. When the U.S. abolished owning people, the need to "own" people didn't go away, ya dig?

So we had to come up with new ways of "owning" people's economic production. We have the most outrageously expensive and inefficient healthcare system in the world, and reforming it is nearly impossible, since it's about one-sixth of our entire economy.

We created a punishing benefits system that permanently traps people in poverty; then, we eliminated federal protections for abortion so that we can have a future underclass of people born into poverty - cuz we also restrict access to birth control. How dare you want to control your own body, you whore?

We haven't raised the federal minimum wage in, what, 20 years now? (I can't be assed to Google.) If you want a non-minimum-wage job, it seems like every employer wants a college degree. When I was growing up, college was sold as the golden ticket out of that minimum wage life. A four-year college degree can run anywhere from $20,000 a year (for an "affordable" state school) to over $200,000 a year. We require 18-year-olds to sign their futures away with federal credit cards we call student loans to pay for college degrees, and we assign a punishing interest rate that capitalizes/compounds monthly.

Get in line, slave.

I am not perfect. I have made lots and lots of mistakes in my life (and finances). But what's fascinating to me is after 3 years of reprieve from student loans (that I've already been paying for 15 years), seeing them return has just... killed something inside me. The desire to interact, post pictures, talk with other people about dolls - it's dead.

I talked to a student loan counselor, and thanks to all the changes that the federal government has made to the student loan program over the years, I still have 20 more years to pay. 35 years of payments for a degree. I will have paid enough to afford a small mansion, and I'll likely still have to pay cancellation of debt (COD) income tax after those 20 years, cuz my federal credit card interest rate is so high, I won't touch the principal balance of my loans. As in, I will make $300,000 of nothing but interest payments for the next 20 years. That's one HELL of a return on the federal government's investment. THAT is how you make money in this country.

I know all the arguments about the "investment" in my education, and believe me, I know all of the ways I could have been smarter and paid stuff off sooner. But you know what? IDGAF. 35 years and $600K later - I Don't Give A Fuck. I've been a wage slave, a healthcare bill slave, and now, I'm back to being a federal credit card debt slave. No bankruptcy. No reprieve. There's no escape but death.

Don't worry. I've dug myself out of holes from working minimum wage, being in medical debt, being working class, and I'll dig myself out of this student loan hole, too.

However, I cannot deny that I am a gear in the US economic slavery engine, and I am angry. (if you want to argue that my frequent use of "slave" is offensive - I get it, but also, I think it's helpful to view current forms of economic coercion in the lens of the U.S. historical reliance on slavery. Is it actual slavery? Of course not. History doesn't repeat; it rhymes.)

So... dolls are on the back burner right now.

As another aside, it's interesting watching the hobby - and other hobbies - crash and burn, now that student loans are back online and disposable income dries up. We are going to be pushed into another recession, because student loans are expected to suck approximately $1 billion USD out of the economy annually. If you don't have student loans - now is a great time to pick up some good deals on dolls.

[comeondowntosouthparkrpg-blog]

Lola Thomas

Will she friend us on Facebook yet? Lola has been accepted! Send in your blog and faceclaim!

out of character info

Name/Alias: lexi (yeah im gonna try this again because looks like the negativity is GONE. BLESS.)

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 18

Join Our Discord: Yeaaaah

Timezone: central

Activity: 7 ( i do work so activity will prolly bump before 2pm and after 8pm lmao )

Triggers: nada

Password: jimmy can fast pass my ass ;))

Character that you’re applying for: Lola Thomas

Favourite ships for your character: going in this with a clean slate so try and give me a favorite ship? ’,:)

in character info

Full name: Lola Diane Thomas

Birthday: May 20th.

Sexuality, gender, pronouns: pansexual, female, she/her

Age and grade: 16 (almost 17) && senior.

Faceclaim: Taylor Hill

Appearance:

Head: Lola is what you call a tall glass of water. She’s refreshingly attractive. Her eyes are neither blue or green but a weird combination of the two colors, making them pop against her naturally darkened complexion. Her hair is soft and wavy and like to tangle near the ends by the time Lola is out of school and on the way to work. It’s color likes to change with the rare sunlight, meaning if she is outside in the sun all day every day natural highlights will appear in her honey chestnut tresses. Her nose is like a little button that deserves to be booped constantly. Her lips are full and plump- to that she owes genetics. Lola believes it is her only good trait.

Body: A natural looker. She stands at about 5'8, so be prepared if you’re tiny. She will tower you with her legs for DAYS.  She doesn’t have particularly large assets but they are there. And it’s a nice handful on either side of the equator. You just gotta look for them behind her non-stop barrage of sweaters. She likes to say she has a white girl booty- its cute && snooty. Her shoulders and cheeks are very, very, lightly dusted in freckles you can only see in the winter. Despiter her tall figure, Lola is NOT a bean pole, she’s slim thicccc weighing about 145 pounds and it’s not in her face.

Style: Lola dresses like she lives in Goodwill, trendy and thrifty. She would kill for knee socks and button up blouses. She aims to look like ‘The classic look of a teenager in the 90’s’. Her shoes will never don a heel for she believes she is 'too tall’ for them. She likes to keep a mellow color scheme for all her clothing items. Tan, green, white. Sometimes she looks like the first instagram post you see tagged * v i n t a g e. *

Personality: 

First off let’s get this straight, with Lola it’s not a personality but more of how she adopts a personality to fit each social clique she is suckered into that day. If you dig deeep deeeeeep down pass the meme references and pop culture shout outs- she’s awfully shy and hates making the first move in ANY kind of situation. She is sympathetic to most of the problems she hears- other than relationship ones. What’s a feeling for someone else other than your cat? She doesn’t get it. Skittish doesn’t even cover how much of a fraidy cat she is.. One little boo when she’s not expecting it is enough to get Lola to shriek and jump three feet into the air. She does have a nuturing instinct, finding it rather difficult to see anyone lonely or upset.

Once you get to know Lola, she is a sweetheart with a soul of gold. She would freeze in the frigid temperatures to keep her friend warm. She’s the girl who will sneak you into her house so you dont have to go home if you’re scared too or can’t. She is quite snarky however- as if a dam broke and every witty thought ever spun in her head rushes out. Once you get her talking about something she is personally interested in, good luck shutting her up. Lola is also a very superstitious person. Never one too step on a crack or split a pole. Her biggest quirk would have to be her need for reassurance that her jokes are funny. She thinks of herself as a comedian but is already sure everyone thinks she is trying too hard. She is a rather dull girl on the outside, moody and solemn. But if you can crack into her cold shell there’s an ooey gooey sweetness inside. Lola is often easily upset- movies to road kill make her tear up. Anytime she even gets mad the salry reminders if her lameness well up in her eyes. And that only pisses her off more.

Despite having a cool exterior she can and will snap- just push the right buttons. 

History:

Lola wouldnt deem herself an outcast yet she would always feel that way. Whether she was cheering with the girls or writing lists with Jenny, her feelings were uncontrollable. Her anxiety makes it impossible to determine if someone is being nice to her or if they have a plot to harm her. In middle school, Lola secretly dreamt of becoming a goth kid- going as far as painting her nails black for two years. But her fears never made her set out to do it. Plus everyone was a little then so isn’t that technically confirming? Her school work was the only thing Lola was ever certain in. Work was easy, you couldn’t fuck it up by being a complete oddball. It was practically memorization. After starting high school, Lola was practically a wallflower. Hell she was the wall and the flower all wrapped in one. She dropped every friendship and dedicated herself to her studies and her pets. After she got a job she was allowed to have them finally and her fur babies were the only things she cared about truly and deeply. For they could never hate their mother.

Things were always tough for Lola, socially or economically, but that didn’t mean her childhood sucked. It just meant instead of a Barbie dreamhouse for Christmas she got the summer edition Barbie. Not a house. Just the doll. Jealousy is an emotion often clouding her anxieties and judgement on people. It caused her to lose her best friend since.. Well, as long as she could remember. Lola grew jealous and almost possessive over Jenny. She probably didn’t mean too but when she saw Jenny getting along with people when she couldnt caused a burning rage to settle in her chest. It got so bad Lola didnt even speak to anyone for a week before blowing up and ruining her only real friendship.

Just because she looks innocent doesn’t mean the brunette is. There are probably a few flat tires and keyed cars residing in South Park that are Lola’s own doing. Not to mention she is a total bystander. You wanna skip school? Cool, yeah I’ll watch for a teacher. You wanna smoke pot in the bathroom? It’s all good as long as she gets a hit. These are all childish 'bad behaviors’ but as Lola sees it, there’s no point in trying that hard to be bad. After all the one time she tried it, the poor thing almost died from hypothermia after blindly listening to a slumber party dare.

You aren’t supposed to sneak out in slumber parties. Or streak in Wal-Mart. Or jump of a bridge into negative temp waters. But these are all things Lola did too prove she was cool. And it ended up with her grounded, being hospitalised for pneumonia, and gaining a large fear of heights. And a hatred for party games.

Sample paragraph:

Of course, it was another cold blustery day. Chestnut tresses fluttered in front of her sight along the whole way home, it didn’t matter how many times she forcefully blew the bangs out of her face- they always flopped back down. Numbing fingers clutched tighter to the soft cloth lining of her jacket pockets. The index fingers and thumbs of both hands pinching at the materiel. Gosh- why is it always freezing? Dull orbs flittered around the blank scenery of the all too familiar path from her house to the school. The only sounds Lola could hear were the crunching of her flats against the snow and the wind whipping furiously around her. Boring. It was all white and boring. Lola was tired of being bored. She imagined that would be the only feeling she could muster for the rest of her life and it made the corners of her glossed lips tug down.

She shook her head as if to clear the thoughts instantly, humming a tune to distract herself as she continued on her trek.

One step, two step, three step…

…Sixteenth step-

Lola really needed a friend. A small sigh lifted her chest and as it billowed past her mouth she noticed movement in her peripherals. Was she really looking down this whole time like an idiot? How embarrassing! She clenched her hands into fists, further rumpling the jacket from its own pockets. Avoiding any kind of eye contact she swayed over to the side near the street and hurried her steps along. Too fast to count now. She passed the figure and her hands slowly unfurled. The blood rushing to her digits made them quite warm and her face flushed as well. God she was awkard.

Just as she thought she was in the clear, Lola felt a tap on her shoulder and her heart stuttered in its cavity as she stumbled to a stop. Fuck.

Headcanons:

🌟 owns a bike but rarely rides it.

🌟 has one cat- a black kitten named sparrow.

🌟 also two rats- yin and yang which are little chocolate colored sisters.

🌟 3.8 GPA

🌟 wants to learn french

🌟 owns a polaroid camera kinda girl

🌟 gardens in her free time

Anything else:

Im really insecure so if it takes me time to reply its cuz im demeaning myself and my baby and my words. 

[megabadbunny]

For the DxR fic meme: Nine x Rose; 01 G ☯

(Nine x Rose, Jackie’s flat, midnight, Rose’s diary; from @doctorroseprompts )

***

He knows he shouldn’t, and yet, here he is.

(But it’s not exactly his fault, is it? If she didn’t wanthim to see it, maybe she shouldn’t have left it lying around all public in theopen, conspicuous and winking at him and daring him to take a little peek,wriggling its (figurative) hips like a minx in red throwing a perfumed kissover one shoulder. Never mind the fact that it wasn’t lying around in public somuch as it was in her room, that it wasn’t in the open so much as it was tuckedunder her mattress.)

The Doctor glances around furtively, even though he knows noone will catch him in the act; the flat is empty of any other living thing,save for him and the dust motes colonizing the space beneath the rug. Rose andher oddity of a mum have whisked off somewhere or other (“a proper girls’night”, Jackie might’ve said, or might not have, as the Doctor might not havebeen listening) and Jack is goodness-knows-where with goodness-knows-whom, sothe Doctor figures he’s got a good few hours to himself before anyone returns.And he’s got to find some way to occupy himself, hasn’t he?

(Besides, it isn’t as if he went snooping specifically for it.More like, he snooped, and there it conveniently was. Also, he’s bored.)

Plunking himself down on her bed—not nearly as soft or plushas her TARDIS bed, he thinks with a smirk—the Doctor opens the book to thefirst page.

Dear dairy readsthe first line.

The Doctor chuckles. There is no date scrawled anywhere onthe page, but the scribbles and misspellings amidst very careful and deliberatestrokes tell the Doctor these words were written by someone who had only recentlylearned penmanship, and was determined to do it well.

Dear dairy

Hello how are you? Myname is Rose Marion Tyler. It is my brithday today I am 6 years old.

It’s almost impossible to imagine Rose ever being so young;far easier to picture her emerging fully-grown and stubborn-willed and jeopardy-friendlystraight from inception. But the Doctor tries, and in his mind’s eye he canalmost see her sitting on the bed—no, lying on it, stomach-down, her sock-cladfeet kicking idly in the air. Her hair, unbleached and light brown, would be pulledback into a ponytail, held in place by one of those what d’you-call-it’s. A scrunchie. Her head would bend down inconcentration over the diary as she clutched her pen tightly in her small fist.The Doctor imagines the pen to be pink, glittery, one of those gel-things, hopelesslyand wonderfully childish and girly, and his grin broadens.

Mummy and me had aparty in the park and Lottie and Fred cud not come but Shireen was there andMickey to and his gran and my grandad Prentis. Grandad brung cake from thestore it has had a heart drawed on and my name and there were candels.We had ice cream to. And I had prezents there was a barby and shoes and a newbell for my bike…

The list continues and the Doctor rolls his eyes fondly.Clearly, six-year-old Rose had decided to commit only the most pertinent ofdetails to memory. He flips through perhaps the first quarter of the diary, pausingat a mention of Mickey here, a drawing of a flower there, and watches as Rose’shandwriting grows more confident, her entries more substantial. Her diary is amicrocosm of her adventures with mates, days at school, developing crushes, thelikeability of some of Jackie’s boyfriends and the caddishness of others. Atrandom, the Doctor slips a finger between the pages and opens the diarymid-entry, perhaps a year or two along its timeline.

and it felt awful butI didnt say anything bc he was right I dont have a dad but Keisha got angry andtold him to butt out and mind his own business. So then Nick laughed and madefun of Keisha bout her mum and I thot Keisha might cry so I punched Nick in thenose and it bled and the head teacher says I cant come back to school for aweek. Mum says Im in trouble but she didnt stop granddad from buying me a 99 onthe way home and she said next time do a slap its easier on the nuckles.

The Doctor can just picture Rose, eight years old, eyesflashing and stance wide as she bloodies some little twerp’s nose with herfist. Now that—that is a Rose he has no trouble imagining. Laughing, the Doctorshakes his head and flips to a later entry.

8 Nov 1996

Dear diary,

We went to go see Dad yesterday.

The Doctor pauses, hesitates. He knows what the words mean—they’refigurative, not literal, because it would be another eleven years before Rose sawany more of Pete Tyler than old photos and a grave—but the memory of the daynine years earlier still sends a shiver down his spine, clenches something inhis gut in a guilty-sick feeling he can’t quite explain.

Mum told me the storyagain. She seemed all right definitely better than the last time. I think thephotos help. Granddad came to and I don’t think he rly liked Dad very much buthe was nice about him today nicer than on other days. Afterwards Mum went todrop me off with Mickey but he said she needed me so I went on home and she seemeda little happier but she still cried a bit.

The Doctor wrinkles his nose. Something about Mickey theIdiot doing a good turn makes him grumpy. Who does that idiot think he is,anyway?

We had tea and fellasleep in front of the telly. I wanted to make her dinner but there was nothingin and I couldnt find anything in her purse so I went down to Ms Nodd’s bc she’sout seeing her grandson and I got the spare key from under her flower pot and Ilooked in her bedroom and found a few pounds and took them. I bought Mum aChinese from her favourite place and she didnt ask where I got the money so I didnttell her. I dont think Ms Nodd would know it was me that took it but I stillfeel bad I just didnt know what else to do. Ill pay her back when I get somemoney for my bday.

Nice old bird, that Ms Nodd. Much nicer than some of theother tenants on the Estate, with her blue-tinged hair and cheerful smile andwithered old hands that freely distribute home-baked biscuits to errant TimeLords who just happen to be handy with a squeaky front door. The Doctor makes amental note to liberate an ATM of a couple hundred-pound-notes at his earliestopportunity and slip them into her flat.

He reads a few more pages—comfortably silly stuff, all ofit, more crushes and rants about school and discussions of celebrities andfashion and Rose’s favorite things on telly—until his fingers land on an oddlybrittle page, warped in places, buckling. Several of the words are nearlyimpossible to discern, smudged as they are, and it takes the Doctorapproximately .003 seconds to identify the water marks as tears.

(There’s no dear diaryhere, no date. The words simply begin, as if writing anything more than theabsolutely necessary would take too much energy. Like it would hurt too much.)

Granddad’s gone.

The Doctor sighs, and his hearts each break a little foryoung Rose, curled up in her bed and crying bitter tears into her pillow. Tenyears old is far too young to experience the cruelty of such a loss. But it isn’tas if it gets any easier at any other age. The Doctor knows that to be painfullytrue.

Had a heart attack.Doctors said he went in his sleep and didn’t feel anything. I hope that’s true.Mum said he’s with the angels now but that’s stupid. The angels don’t need him wedo. I already miss him.

Mum can’t stop crying.I wish Dad was here.

And there’s that feeling again in the Doctor’s gut, thesquirmy-sicky one. Almost as if his stomach knows he shouldn’t be doing this,like his body is punishing him. It was all well and good reading about the funfrivolities of a carefree primary-schooler, but this sort of thing—this issomething else. Something deep and personal, a compound fracture of emptinessand hurt. The Doctor knows should stop reading now. He really should.

(He doesn’t.)

It takes a few weeks for the mentions of Granddad Prentice tostart fading, but eventually, they do, fading away to be gradually replaced bythe normality of everyday life. Sometimes months pass between diary-entries;other times, years. The Doctor smiles as he glances over recountings of schooldays and formals and skipping classes, of Jackie’s eccentric cluster of boyfriends,of fights with friends and happy makings-up after, of holidays and gossip andhopes for the future. The day Rose and Shireen fall out over a boy is marked byan obscene amount of swearing and words crossed-out and pencil-punctures dugdeep into the page; the day Mickey asks Rose to be his girlfriend is noted withexclamation points and a lipgloss-kiss.

The day Rose meets Jimmy Stone is noted with a single heartthat simply reads Mrs Rose Stone.

Grimacing at the words, the Doctor forces himself to presson.

OMG met this bloke Jimmyyesterday n he was soooo fit reads the next entry. Shireen and Keisha and me went down the pub and he was playing in theband and I thot he fancied Keisha at first but after he asked for my number ♡ ♡ ♡I kno it doesn’t mean nothing so I didn’ttell Mickey cos no point in him worrying and he gets so jealous anyway lol

Awww, poor jealous ickle Mickey, thinks the Doctor. He snortsderisively. Human beings—so quick to such petty reactions. He’s very glad hedoesn’t have to worry about silly things like that.

Still, it’s a little surprising when, just a few pages later,things have already progressed by leaps and bounds. Jimmy kissed me! leaps out from the page, followed by things like Mickey and me had a fight and Snuck out to hear Jimmy play downtownand Went to the cinema with Jimmy and he puthis hand up my sk

Hearts hammering, the Doctor flips past that page before hiskeen eyes have a chance to read any further. For some reason, the thought ofJimmy putting his hand up anything of Rose’s—indeed, of Jimmy or some otherfool even thinking about touching her, anywhere, with anything—makes him burn abit under the collar. Unpleasant, that. Maybe he’d better take a look at Jackie’sthermostat, make sure it’s doing its job, because it certainly doesn’t feellike it.

(Still, he skips the several pages that follow, just to besafe.)

said if Iwalked out that door I’d better not walk back in and you know what screw her.She’s wasted her whole life crying about Dad and never doing anything withherself and never doing anything for me. I hate her I would rather die then belike her

Eyes widening in surprise, the Doctor quickly scans over thenext few pages, his concern deepening by the second.

love Jimmy andno one can tell me any different and if Mum really knew what love was then she’dunderstand

Im so glad I’mwith him now he gets me like no one else ever has or ever will, ♡ him forever

didnt want totake my a-levels anyway not like it means anything out in the real world

moving into aflat together next week can’t wait ♡♡♡

and I love himbut I wish he’d get a job cos the gigs don’t make enough n I can’t covereverything on my own

came home drunkagain last night n wouldnt tell me where he’d been

told me I’dbetter cough up the rest of the rent by next weekend or else he would

And then, nothing.

The Doctor frowns. Whatever he would do is left unexplained, torn away along with a wholecluster of pages in the diary, leaving a ragged little scar behind where wordsand feelings used to sit. The Doctor runs a finger along the page-stumps leftin the spine, and wonders.

What could have happened that was so bad that even the memoryof it had to be ripped away?

The next entry picks up a few weeks later. It does notmention Jimmy. Instead, the page displays only a handful of lonely words:

He wasright. I’m so stupid.

It takes a moment for the Doctor to realize that the diaryis shaking in his hands. But that’s only because he’s gripping it so tightlyhis knuckles are glowing bright white in an attempt to jump out of his skin. Andsuddenly he’s glad, in quite a perverse way, that he has witnessed thedestruction of the Reapers firsthand, because otherwise the temptation to pilotthe TARDIS back in time to ensure that Jimmy Stone never hurt Rose—that henever so much as existed, never so much as blighted this planet with even asingle vile breath—would be so strong that he’s not entirely sure he’d be ableto stop himself.

Forcing himself to calm, the Doctor skips forward, hopefullyto an entry that won’t cause hisblood to boil angrily in his ears. Now phrases like moved back in with Mum today and applied at Henriks greet his eyes, and he feels the muscles in hisshoulders begin to relax.

and a sweet ginger boy’sstarted coming round, Mum named him Jonesy

but the new job’s notso bad

going out to the clubswith Shireen

Mickey stopped by withflowers today and it was like nothing had ever gone wrong

anyway we’re datingagain

nothing’ll come of itbut some blokes won in Bristol last week so who knows, maybe we’ll win a littlesomething n I could get Mum something nice

a little boring Iguess but prolly about the best I can expect for now

So my job blew uptoday???

Now a grin spreads across the Doctor’s face, lighting it upfrom ear-to-ear. Finally. Took longenough to get here. Now for the reallygood stuff.

Fingers tingling in anticipation, he turns the page.

Nothing.

The Doctor flips through the remaining pages, hunting forsomething, anything, but nothing buta sea of white greets his eyes, winking up at him obnoxiously without so muchas a single date or scribble or scrawl to capture his attention. The rest ofthe diary is completely, utterly blank.

Huffing in irritation, the Doctor sits back, flipping thebook closed with a scowl. It makes a certain sense, he supposes, but still.Really? She’ll write about ice cream and Barbies and school gossip and Mickeythe Idiot but no mention of the TARDIS, no asides about traveling through timeand space, no discussion of Dickens or Slitheen or bitchy trampolines or 900year-old Time Lords taking her by the hand to show her anything her littleheart could ever possibly—

CLANG.

“I just found it!” blurts out the Doctor without eventhinking, pushing off the bed and whirling round to face Rose’s open bedroomdoorway. But no one stands there; indeed, if his superior hearing is anythingto go by (and it usually is), there’s no one within several meters of him, certainlyno one in the flat. And the continuing ding-dang-dongbell’s sound, ringing at twelve lazy but significant intervals, informs himthat his nervousness was for naught—it’s just Jackie’s old grandfather clock,noisily (and unnecessarily, the Doctor thinks with a grump) proclaiming thetime.

It’s midnight. Probably Rose and Jackie will be home soon. Andprobably he shouldn’t let them know he was nosing through Rose’s diary.

(Even if it wasn’t his fault, seeing as they left him aloneand bored and unoccupied in the flat, and even if he didn’t find what he waslooking for—even if he’s not entirely certain what that was.)

As he slips the diary back into its hiding-place beneathRose’s mattress, it occurs to him that there are any number of reasons Rosemight not be writing things in a diary any more—she forgot it at home, or she’stoo tired after their adventures, or too distracted, or maybe she’s even got anew one aboard the TARDIS, hidden somewhere equally silly. But there’s anotheroption too, he realizes; that she’s simply too happy to see the need forwriting things down, that she is too busy living her memories to think of takingthe time to document them. The thought warms him, contentment blooming in hischest, and he leaves Rose’s room with a smile, closing the door behind him.

(He still checks her room on the TARDIS just in case.)

***

part ii