#laura reads the vnas

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'Ah. Yes, well.' The Doctor looked flustered. He crossed to the door and listened for a moment. Then he straightened a mirror that had been turned to the wall. 'You see Chris, what's been happening… Urn, well, it's the TARDIS, you see.' 'Yeah?' 'Well, my head really. Only it's been getting so full lately. People to see…' 'Plots to unravel.' 'Yes, you know the sort of thing. But even my brain has a limited capacity.' 'Unlike your pockets.' 'Yes, you know I think I might have a hole. I seem to be losing things…' 'Your head is full,' Chris reminded him. 'Urn, yes. So to compensate, the TARDIS may be sideshunting a few of my subconscious thoughts into the nearest available database.' 'Meaning me?'

i love this so much. the tardis should do weird freak stuff more often.

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'Doctor,' said Chris gently. 'You're crukking wonderful, you know.' 'I know, I know,' he said with a watery smile. 'And if I didn't exist, you'd have to invent me.'

i've just got something in my eye...

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making a start on the man the myth the legend (lungbarrow) and the version on the internet archive is the 2003 ebook which includes an introduction by marc platt so like

Whether this reappearance means that the crazy price of the original book on Ebay will come down, I cannot say.

got some bad news for you there buddy :(

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For some inexplicable reason, his hat appeared to be entirely wind-resistant.

this is, of course, because the seventh doctor who is a cartoon character, and thus not wholly beholden to the laws of physics like us mere mortals

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‘Death doesn’t give us second chances, can’t you see?’ the Doctor pleaded, his voice shrill, as if he were desperate to be understood. ‘If it did, don’t you think that I would have changed the past a thousand times. Don’t you think that I would have brought back all the friends I’ve lost? We have to face losing the people we care for. We can’t avoid it. And it hurts.’ The Doctor pressed his hand against his breast, as if he needed to support his heart. ‘Sometimes it hurts so much I can hardly bear it.’

this is moving and all but it’s also like. super funny he says all this and then one of the friends he’s lost strolls right into the room

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'Well, I won't. I wouldn't if I could. Who do you think I am?' He thumbed his chest. 'I'm me. The Doctor. What I have been, someone might have imagined. What I will be, how can I tell?

oh this is some fun meta stuff

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‘You’re a semi-mythical figure,’ said Joel. ‘Don’t give me vocational guidance counselling - it’s weird.’

personally i would like a semi-mythical figure to give me vocational guidance counselling

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'How can you know then?' Andred scanned his plasma screen for relevant information. There was no mention of any House of Lungbarrow. 'K9 is very wise,' said Leela proudly. 'I think we'd better have a long talk about security and what you are and are not allowed to access.'

Help, My Dog Is A Major Security Risk (not clickbait)

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marc platt talks about lungbarrow as being inspired by gormenghast...would explain why i liked the vibe of the house so much - i read the titus books a few years ago and really enjoyed them, really distinctive both in terms of tone + setting

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He nodded. He understood that her roots were far away on some benighted, primitive world that she did not even have a sensible catalogued name or number for.

oh my god andred...i hope you've never said that to her face

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anyway my closing thoughts on that were that while i occasionally found it hard to keep track of all the various goings on in the plot, i really enjoyed the general emotional tone. it was so good in that respect that it almost justifies liz's death to me, an event that in its original context just felt cheap to me

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Chris laughed. It was still a boy’s laugh, clear and happy, after everything he’d been through.

oughoughough there's so many good little moments in this one

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The Doctor had noiselessly appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. He had dark hair and a lined face and deep blue eyes, and was wearing an oversized orange dressing gown with a little cat embroidered over the breast pocket.

a holdover from 6 i'm assuming? bless.

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Julia didn’t like the way was arguing. It was too close to the ethical issues she had raised with Moriah during the planning stages of the work. Was the definition of a human being really the ability to live independently? Was the essence of being human the ability to survive in isolation? In the end, the research team had agreed that it had to be. Julia had always felt uncomfortable with the idea that what differentiated her from a Toy, what made her human, was her capacity to be alone.

rotating this around in my mind a lil bit particularly because my second year of university i read like...an entire 40 page essay partly about the potential difficulties of fitting mentally disabled people into descartes’ model of what differentiates humans from animals + i definitely think there’s similar things to be said here re: a precise definition of human being a deeply fraught thing to achieve 

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‘It should have been one of the other ones,’ he said. I could just hear him. ‘One of the other Doctors in the Nexus. The one who was quick enough to snatch Adric from the freighter. The one who arrived thirty seconds before Oscar Botcherby was stabbed to death, instead of thirty seconds afterwards. The one who saved Jan as well as everyone else.’ His head had fallen forward again. ‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘I’m the wrong one.’

oh okay. i’ll just launch myself off a cliff then, it’ll be less painful

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also...i HAVE started so vile a sin and like. i knew roz died in this one but i didn’t realise that it’s literally the opening!!