#how to play a neurodeviant character

[modernwizard]

Reasons I love Dhawan Master #47: He’s neurodeviant!

In no particular order, here is an illustrated list of reasons I love Sacha Dhawan’s Master, most of which boil down to the way that Sacha Dhawan so expertly embodies the Master to such a degree that we can look  into this character’s mind as we never have before.

Find my full series under the HELP I WUVS HIM tag or at the why I love Dhawan Master tag.

Read more about my version of Dhawan Master/Thirteen [plus fam] in The Happy Famverse, a series of comic shorts about the domestic lives of [extended] Team TARDIS.

#47: He’s neurodeviant! Yes, I am using that particular word, rather than “neurodiverse” or “neurodivergent” or “neuroatypical,” for a reason. “Deviant” has long been a code word for “anything the people in charge don’t approve of,” including one’s intelligence, one’s social interactions, one’s sexuality, one’s abilities, etc., etc., etc. As an extension, it’s also associated with iconoclastic rebellion and often stubborn adherence to something contrary to the mainstream. I think that the Master [generally speaking, but especially this one] would glorify their renegade spirit and other condemned traits by turning the term “deviant” into one of pride. So that’s why he’s neurodeviant.

In this case, “neurodeviant” means “possessing and using a neurotype, brain style, thought pattern, and/or means of self-expression that’s rather uncommon.” I’m sure it’s pretty obvious to a lot of readers already that he is neurodeviant [just as it was pretty obvious to a certain number of you that he finds choking a turn-on], but I don’t care. I start from the basics and prove those so that I can work my way into more complex arguments.

Evidence for the Master’s neurodeviance is all over the place. Here are several key examples, though this is not a comprehensive list.

He has a conversational consciousness. See #34 [his reaction to Thirteen’s TARDIS] and #11 [his mind at work].

He acts everything out. See #46 for an in-depth example.

He has a variety of behaviors particularly associated with neurodeviant self-expression, stimming, coping, etc., including, but not limited to the following: nonstandard eye contact [see #42], saying “Ooooh” [see #38], baring his teeth [see #33], repeating things [see #31 and #28], headbanging when frustrated [see #27], rocking when excited [see #14], brainfingers [see #12], dancing/clapping when excited [see #3], and his vibrating when angry [see #2].

I want to know why the Master is neurodeviant. Why did Sacha Dhawan and the showrunners decide to make this version of the character so obviously neurodeviant?

I have two possible answers, one from the showrunners’ perspective, one from the actor’s. From the showrunners’ perspective, the Master has always been mad, insane, nuts, crazy, mentally ill, whatever. The character’s mental traits have also been inextricably linked with their cruel, immoral actions, suggesting that the Master is a nasty sadistic person because of their mental traits. In the showrunners’ minds, crazy = evil. Furthermore, neurodeviance, according to them, isn’t so far from insanity. Neurodeviance = crazy = evil. In this interpretation, the showrunners may be using the Master’s neurodeviance as a [crappy, horrible, wrong, ableist, bigoted] attempt at explaining his mean-spirited, coercive, sadistic actions.

From Sacha Dhawan’s perspective, things might look a bit different. He writes openly on Instagram about having Crohn’s disease and chronic anxiety. He doesn’t discuss Crohn’s a lot, but he does mention that its symptoms can be disruptive. He goes into a little more detail about chronic, debilitating anxiety, how it distorts his thoughts, and why it’s important to bring this subject out in the open so that people don’t feel so ashamed about it. In other words, he’s intimately familiar with health limitations/chronic pain/physical disability, as well as mental pain and suffering/mental illness/unfun ways in which your brain messes with your head. It’s possible that he plays the Master as neurodeviant because he has some familiarity with uncommon physical and mental conditions and wants to draw on those to represent the Master realistically and sympathetically, at least as far as neurodeviance is concerned.

I see both possible answers at work when the Master’s on the screen. Sometimes he’s just an insane megalomanaical dipshit with dreams of creating a new race. Sometimes that perspective even affects the actors. In an interview with Sy Fy Fangirls, Sacha Dhawan talks about surprising Jodie Whittaker and gang with the revelation on the plane that O is the Master. He says, “That was the first time Jodie and the cast and crew had actually seen me as the Master and how I was going to do it and they were like, ‘Wow, okay. This guy's crazy.’“ Hey, it’s the nuts = evil = nuts equation in practice!

At the same time, I also see the more empathetic perspective. Indeed, in the same interview, Sacha Dhawan described the character as “stooped [I think this is supposed to be “steeped”] in history and emotion, which is what I wanted to bring to the surface. By doing that, I think the audience, as much as they hate him, will also sympathize with him and feel for him.” [Sidenote: Obviously he was unfamiliar at this point with just how much certain people love the character and will side with any version for various reasons.] And I see that emphasis on history and emotion, as opposed to batshit evil, in Sacha Dhawan’s performance. I see that in the way that he performs the character’s neurodeviance consistently, meticulously, realistically, and, as far as I can tell, respectfully. Rather than a source of comedy or an explanation for the Master’s cruelty, Sacha Dhawan tends to portray the Master’s neurodeviance as a neutral aspect of the character. That is so fuckin’ rare these days that I have to write rapturous essays when it happens.

@natalunasans @spoonietimelordy @queen-of-meows @sclfmastery

[modernwizard]

Why I love Dhawan Master #51: He’s played by Sacha Dhawan!

In no particular order, here is an illustrated list of reasons I love Sacha Dhawan’s Master, most of which boil down to the way that Sacha Dhawan so expertly embodies the Master to such a degree that we can look  into this character’s mind as we never have before.

Find my full series under the HELP I WUVS HIM tag or at the why I love Dhawan Master tag.

Read more about my version of Dhawan Master/Thirteen [plus fam] in The Happy Famverse, a series of comic shorts about the domestic lives of [extended] Team TARDIS.

#51: He’s played by Sacha Dhawan!

Before I get to what I love about Sacha Dhawan, though, I have to talk about the thing I cannot stand about Dhawan Master. It’s also the thing that I cannot stand about Thirteen. Basically, the show [the BBC and writers and directors] refuses to deal with the fact that Sacha Dhawan is the first British Indian actor playing this character. He’s also playing opposite Jodie Whittaker, who’s the first White woman to play the character of the Doctor. I don’t give a fuck if Time Lords don’t do race and gender the way that Earthlings do; we’re dealing with two Earthling actors, a brown man and a white woman, whose casting is groundbreaking because of their race and gender. Their race and their gender are important. However, the show so strenuously avoids dealing with the race and gender of the Doctor and the Master that they end up in situations with unfortunately racial and gender-based implications.

Talking about Nazis, racism, misogyny, and rape below the cut.

@natalunasans @sclfmastery -- my sometime partners in meta...

Example #1: In Spyfall 2, the Master disguises himself as a Nazi officer [for some reason never adequately explained]. He’s hiding his true appearance under a perception filter. Toward the end, the Doctor messes up his perception filter, causing the Nazis to see that he’s not one of them and to attack him. The show presents this as the Master getting his just desserts; it’s even played for laughs, with the Master asking if they could just talk about this. “You’ve always struck me as such reasonable people...” Hah hah, Nazi oppression of non-white people is funny!

This episode nominally addresses race, insofar as the Master explains to the Doctor why the Nazis aren’t clocking him. That’s not really a discussion of race at all, though. An actual discussion of race in this bit would note that the white Doctor hides one Indian person, a woman, from the Nazis, but rats out another, a man, to them. It would also note that the Doctor’s outing of the Master to the Nazis exploits the fact that she’s a pretty blond white woman. Therefore she’s closer to the “Aryan archetype” that she says the Master doesn’t fit. Being closer to that archetype, she’s protected from the violence visited on people who don’t fit that archetype. In this bit, both the Doctor and the Master are using the Nazis for their own ends. The Doctor in particular seems to be trading on Nazi sexism and racism, using the Master’s color and gender against him.

Example #2: In The Timeless Children, the Master turns his penetration by the Cyberium into a sexualized encounter. [See #45: “He’s robosexual!” for details.] The Cyberium imparts to him all the knowledge compiled by the Cyber empire, so he also gains access to a vast amount of information. When he eroticizes penetration by the Cyberium then, he’s also eroticizing the acquisition of knowledge.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at what he does with the Doctor in The Timeless Children. He separates her from her fam under duress. He pins her down with a paralysis field. And then he forces her to learn about her past. This is clearly physical and psychological torture. It’s also a violation, done without her consent.

Furthermore, given the Master’s sexualization of stuff like this with the Cyberium, what he does to the Doctor here is also a sexualized violation. It’s particularly gross in terms of gender because we have a man pinning down a woman and forcing her to submit to something she does not want. If that sounds rapey, that’s because it is. It’s equally gross in terms of race because we have a brown man overpowering a white woman. This plays into stereotypes of non-white colonized people [especially men] as less civilized, lustier, and less in control of themselves than white colonizing people, especially white women, who are thought to be demure and innocent. In this example, the Master in particular seems to be trading on colonialist ideas of sex and race, using them against the Doctor.

And this is what I really can’t stand about Thirteen and Dhawan Master. The BBC’s inability to thoughtfully address their races, their genders, and how those inflect their interactions -- that failure writes both characters into really gross situations where they use racist/sexist beliefs and stereotypes to hurt each other. While the Master in particular has exploited racism, sexism, and a combination in the past [see Simm Master for copious detail], the show has portrayed this as bad and wrong. In this recent season, though, no one calls the Doctor out on the racist/sexist way she feeds the Master to the Nazis, and no one seems to have registered the particularly racist/sexist resonances of the Master’s torture of the Doctor in the last episode. Gross, show. Really gross.

I write about these failures for a reason. First of all, the intersections of race, class, and gender are on my mind as I, a white nonbinary person in the US, watch the Covid 19 pandemic and recent police brutality expose the racist, sexist, classist, etc., etc., etc. underpinnings of this society. Second of all, this particular mini essay requires writing about what I don’t like before I can explain what I do like.

I don’t like Dhawan Master as written and narratively presented. Because the show thinks that it can ignore his race and gender in conjunction with the Doctor’s, he comes off as an exceptionally gross racist/sexist in ways that the show never comments on. By the same token, Thirteen suffers from the same inability of the show to deal with the intersection of her race and gender [especially apparent in her scenes with Ruth Doctor].

All that said, I absolutely love Dhawan Master as played and interpreted by Sacha Dhawan. If you’ve been following my series, you know that I praise the actor for his thorough attention to detail and his skill in making the Master a very specific character who thinks in an unusual, multivocal way, exhibits many traits of neurodeviance, and clearly deals with several lifetimes’ worth of rage, pain, and grief. His focus on expressing what the character is thinking and feeling encourages the audience to try to understand the character and to commiserate. And he’s largely successful! It’s a testament to his talent and skill that he takes this character made so unintentionally GROSS by the show and turns him into someone perceived by many viewers as relatable and sympathetic.