#summarized opera

[spacedreamon]

Could I get a Erik/ the phantom playlist as well?

Vengeance by Lucas King

Your Reality from DDLC

Hell’s Coming With Me by Poor Man’s Poison

World Burn from Mean Girls the Musical

Gospel of Dismay by DA Games

Sick of The Sun by Poppy

Traitor by Olivia Rodrigo

Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me by Taylor Swift (cw insensitivity about psych wards)

Choke by I Don’t Know How But They Found Me

Winner Takes It All by ABBA

Good 4 U by Olivia Rodrigo

You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift

[roadtophantom]

the adlibs for the poto korea finale show are golden 😭😭

[evil-ontheinside]

Tfw a middle aged man comes up to you and your friends after a play/musical and first asks why you watched the play and if it's for graduation preparation (you and your friends are all university students) and then asks if you understood the play (you read the source material) <_<

[avelera]

Parallels between Jayvik and the Phantom of the Opera

I can't believe I haven't seen any discussion yet around the musical theater influences in Arcane S2 so far (besides my one mention of its parallels with Les Miserables).

So as a basic, Phantom of the Opera-loving bitch, can we please take a moment to examine the Phantom of the Opera parallels that are literally shoved in our faces during this opening sequence and what that means for Jayvik?

Viktor is the Phantom. The show opening outright says it. The parallels are there. They're impossible to miss.

And then, when you dig a little deeper, hooo boy those parallels become even more stark. Especially if you read Viktor as romantically pining after Jayce, which 99.9999% of humanity does.

To quickly summarize, Phantom of the Opera is the story of a deformed genius who falls in love with an opera singer, Christine, and then nurtures her talents, only for her to in turn fall in love with a nobleman, Raoul. The ensuing love triangle is the heart of the plot, with Raoul and the Phantom both vying for Christine's love.

This shouldn't be a hard one to see the parallels for.

Viktor = The Phantom. Literally a genius born with a disfigurement, in this case a disability he sees as a weakness and a disease that is sapping away his life and hope of a legacy. He is riddled with jealousy for the person trying to pull his scientific/musical partner away from him, a person who happens to be beautiful and live a life of privilege that Raoul/Mel could offer to Jayce/Christine instead.

Jayce = Christine. Instead of sharing genius in music, he and Viktor share genius in science. Like Christine, he is tugged between the glittering world of politics and privilege, vs his genius and love at a more esoteric skill, in this case science instead of music.

Mel = Raoul. Literally an aristocrat who is far more beautiful than the Phantom/Viktor, who steals away his partner's attention and offers them a glittering life of privilege in the public eye instead of the wonders of their joint musical/scientific pursuits. Whether or not Mel meant to embody this, or steal Jayce from Viktor, this is the role she fulfills in Viktor's view of the world.

But the most profound moment for me of, "Oh wow, they're doing Phantom of the Opera! Actually, they're not just doing Phantom, they're doing Phantom fixit fic?!" was this:

Which, if you'll forgive the potato quality of the screenshots, is literally the moment Viktor has his mask knocked away and then cringes in on himself to hide his exposed face from Jayce.

Which... is literally a scene in Phantom of the Opera? Just after "Music of the Night"?

But we're already in Phantom fixit territory, because Jayce doesn't recoil like Viktor expects! Instead, he embraces Viktor and loves him for all his self-perceived flaws.

And then, AND THEN, in a moment that made my Phantom-loving heart sing, Viktor tells Jayce to go!

And Jayce doesn't.

In the final song of the Phantom of the Opera musical, Christine is forced to choose between Raoul and the Phantom. She chooses the Phantom and kisses him. Flooded by remorse, the Phantom then relinquishes her to the man he knows she truly loves, and when Christine hesitates to leave, he shouts at her, "Go!" and then, of course, she and Raoul leave together.

Viktor is expecting that to happen! I think his order to Jayce very clearly implies that he thinks Mel and Jayce are still together. It's the classic, "Go be with the woman you love instead of staying here and dying with me," trope that we see over and over again in dramas.

But Jayce. Defies. The Trope.

Unlike Christine and just about every buddy war movie out there, he stays with Viktor. He chooses his scientific/artistic partner over the life of aristocracy and privilege that Mel would theoretically offer him. He chooses the masked genius with the disability and calls him perfect. He refuses to go when he is ordered to leave. He stays with Viktor until the end.

And I still can't believe that no one else is talking about this!

[internetgiraffekid1673]

1) I love that I can tell what almost all of these things in the notes are with no further context (shoutout to the Tuck Everlasting one).

2) Girl sells her soul to the personification of evil captialism and her bleeding-heart poet boyfriend fails to save her.

3) Bonus points because I like too many musicals: What if the local ghost story was the combination of a confused middle schooler and a homeless dude?

give a grossly oversimplified summary of one of your favorite musicals. i'll go first.

they raise the price for a piece of paper and everyone's pissed about it.

[plaidos]

How would you personally summarize Homestuck for someone that's never read it?

it’s a deconstruction & meta commentary on the american coming-of-age narrative through the lens of battling/overcoming sexual & gendered repression, told as a multimedia webcomic hypertext in the form of an epistolary space opera

[wardensantoineandevka]

I won't get around to writing a properly developed post on it, but speaking generally and assuming broad good faith, I personally think the anachronism in Veilguard is fine. I know it's a deeply held bit of style for a lot of people, and many hold the directive about no anachronism as important to things feeling properly Dragon Age.

Personally, I never felt it THAT important. I roll my eyes at nitpicking about historically accurate costuming too, and I pause to wonder what IS "anachronism" in fantasy. I think a lot of the style of the games leaned so hard on it that, in some places, it was a substituting this rule in place of developing stronger individual style or voice. I love this series, but I don't feel like characters (notably once you got past core cast), locations, etc. always and consistently had a strong sense of voice, both in terms of diction but also in visual direction. I feel like even the music gets this a little bit, since Veilguard feels more musically interesting to me than many of the prior tracks because, I think, the soundtrack is allowed to feel a little less like vaguely European medieval heroic fantasy.

There's always been anachronism, but I think the strict reliance on adhering to a particular conception of what A Fantasy Story looks and sounds like really hampered, at least for me, the development of style identity. Veilguard's voice and style broke from that in a way that did feel successfully more specific and striking for the story and characters it's trying to dress. I think being released from this directive does—because there's no longer what we bring ourselves to the table from our familiarity with the genre and pattern recognition—however, magnify flaws in how Bioware always has treated the setting as just the backdrop against which these dramas play out. But that's outside the scope of my thoughts here. I'll just summarize that with: that's a consistent Bioware problem, and I don't think it's inherently wrong to approach worldbuilding as merely dressing the set for your story, though perhaps that isn't always the most successful approach here and I know many fans are very invested in the setting itself and its development, so that would put us all at cross purposes.

Don't get me wrong. There IS a place for that sort of directive, a rule against things that scan too modern. But then, I think for it to work, you have to have a very firm idea of your own voice, of your individual style and direction working with that directive, and frankly, I don't think Bioware EVER really had a super strong grasp of it here.

I do think the character design especially, character voice, and visual identity suffered SO much in many earlier instances because of this directive. Meanwhile, I think it's interesting and striking to have things like, for example, Neve clearly drawing from film noir and how that informs how I approach and think about her as a character and how appropriate it feels that Lucanis and Illario end on the stage of an opera house. I feel like being released from having to worry about anachronism has, for me, produced some of the strongest instances of style and voice in the series in a long time.

And I know a lot of people feel the OPPOSITE, which is a matter of personal experience and taste, but for my own, it always felt like the series was weighed down by a notion of needing to properly emulate The Genre. (We've all looked at the infamous browns and muds of Origins, a game I am fond of. This is why it looks and sounds like that, in my opinion.) This fear of being too anachronistic or too modern often left the series not really feeling, to me, like it's really had a firm sense or idea of what its style or voice was, of what made it sound or look like itself, because it was always afraid of being too modern while also feeling afraid to not look enough like a heroic epic fantasy.

I think getting rid of that and no longer fearing it has done a lot for developing a stronger voice with a look, sound, and feel for Veilguard that feels more specific and conveys story and character so much better and more confidently. Because, in the end, that's supposed to be what this is all in service of: conveying character and story. I feel like Veilguard, in being released from this restriction, has developed a stronger voice with which to do it.

[mister-peregrine]

Cherik Rec List: Kink Meme Fill Edition

By request of @thepointofme, I decided to make a reclist of some of my favorite Cherik fanfics not on AO3. This will include a lot of unfinished WIPs, unfortunately, because most fills on the kink meme tend to be such, but they are all well worth the read if I’m putting them on here, unfinished or not, so I won’t be labeling them as WIPs <3

*My personal favorites will be bolded.

(Also, most of these fills are extremely wordy, so I’ve summarized the lengthy ones as succinctly as I can.)

Objects in Mirror Summary: Erik/Charles, pre-slash. AU in which, while Charles Xavier has just returned from Cuba, severed ties with the CIA and started setting up his school, Erik Lehnsherr is an entirely human engineer who's not remotely fond of mutants. Things are complicated when, in the absence of Hank, Charles hires Erik to build Cerebro Mk.2. 

Out of the Park Prompt: Erik/Charles, ensemble cast. Erik is a professional baseball player, and Charles is his clueless yet supportive boyfriend.

Little Birds (AO3) Prompt: Erik/Charles, ensemble cast. AU where they are birds. Yes, it just so happens to be my favorite fill on this list.

Interplanetary Incidents Prompt: Erik/Charles, background pairings. In a futuristic sci-fi setting, Erik and Charles are princes of their respective planets who have just been arranged to be married.

Blue Hotel Prompt: Erik/Charles. Charles and Erik are married, but going through a rough patch, when Erik finds himself teetering on the edge of an affair with his coworker Janos.

How Deep the Bullet Lies Prompt: Erik/Charles, previous Shaw/Charles. Count of Monte Cristo-inspired, modern AU. See full prompt for warnings.

Stage Left (AO3) Prompt: Erik/Charles/Moira, OT3, ensemble cast. Phantom of the Opera AU. + Companion fill below (AO3).

The Bawd and the John Prompt: Erik/Charles. Charles is a brothel owner and Erik, one of their best clients, is madly in love with him.

A Thousand Pages (Give or Take a Few) Prompt: Erik/Charles. Modern setting, rival bookshop owners AU.

Turn Me Inside Out Prompt: Gen, slight Erik/Charles undertones, team as family. Set during the original trilogy. Wherein the original First Class members are all de-aged to their 1962 selves in the modern day.

The Sexual Education of Charles Xavier Prompt: Erik/Charles. No divorce!AU. Charles and Erik seek out a young mutant who sprays them with her powers that induce them to have an uncontrollable amount of sex with each other. Erik, it seems, is full of sexual surprises.

Imagination Prompt: 5+1. Darkfic, mirror!verse.

Honey, They Took the Kids Prompt: Erik/Charles, post-divorce. A government facility kidnaps the children, and Charles enlists the Brotherhood’s help in getting them back.

Untitled Fill Prompt: AU where Charles is paralysed before the start of the movie, either from birth or in a childhood/teenage accident.

Please reblog for visibility so more people will have the chance to read these hidden gems!

[momoguido]

Presenting the results of my latest hyperfixation

Tam Lin is a Scottish folktale, usually presented in ballad form, dating back to at least the 16th Century. It has been summarized and re-told by different people over the years, including Overly Sarcastic Productions. It is the subject of a one-act opera, and was the inspiration for a 1970 movie that updated the story to the present day.

The fairy queen yells at Tam Lin in every version analyzed except for the Anais Mitchell version. Her version is an outlier in many respects, since the entire parade is left out, Janet simply grabs hold of Tam Lin mid-conversation.

Another oddity is Pentangle's version, which was written for the movie and consists of a jumble of images meant to complement scenes from the film, without a coherent narrative.

The biggest surprise to me is how few versions mention Janet seeking an abortion, something that I had always thought of as a central part of the story.

One thing I wish I could have looked at in more depth is the balance between versions that describe Tam Lin's transformations before he goes through them, and versions that describe them as they happen. As they happen is more common, but some songs will do the entire sequence twice.

Going into this, I had two versions prominent in my mind: Anais Mitchell's pop-folk version that leaves out much of the story, and Anne Briggs' very traditional (and very long) version. Because of this, I thought perhaps we would see a decrease in the complexity of the story over the years, but that's not the case, it's basically flat. I think a better comparison might be to separate into traditional and revised versions, although that is something of a judgment call.

There were so many minor discrepancies I couldn't even keep track of them all, but these four stood out because they are so oddly specific. Even the main character's name and the setting aren't consistent across versions, if they're even mentioned at all. Some versions don't even give the main character a name!

My data collection process leaves a lot to be desired, as well as the way in which I decided which events were major or minor, and which things to leave out altogether. This was mainly just a fun way to explore different versions of my favorite folktale, listen to a lot of different people sing different versions of the ballad, and rotate the whole thing in my brain.

[ice-cream-writes-stuff]

The Nightmare Before Christmas Lost in The Book: Over The Spiral Hill

{1} {2}

-

“ “Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move;Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” “ You quote as Jack sang opera to your group, the earlier events of discussing music and dances for the festivities. 

Riddle comments at the words, “I never thought’d you’d be imitating Rook on this… Event.” The dorm head mumbles. You grin at the red-head. “He wishes, the song reminded me of a playwright in our world.” You gesture to Yuu. 

“ “Just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean I don’t believe it.” “ You say the phrase easily, recalling it for this occasion. “That wasn’t from the playwright though… Still a good quote though, you think?” You ask your group, turning away from them. 

…

You felt your face become warm at the line, embarrassed.

-

“Yuu! Grim, Skully!” You happily show off the different details your outfit held. Reminding you of home, hints of Ramshackle hinted in a few stitches.

“Oh yeah, I didn’t realize your’s was a bit stranger than ours.” Grim says, circling around you curiously. 

“It looks good!” Yuu replied, keeping close to you, you laugh.

“It’s very beautiful!” Skully compliments as you blink. An idea forming into your head..

“Hmm, Yuu, I wanted to ask. Do you remember any holidays from ‘Home’?” You ask carefully, knowing the answer. You pick up Grim, watching the other human ponder.

Yuu eyes you back, eyes glazed over thoughtfully. “No, not as much as you.”

“Oh? What do you mean?” Skully joins in, listening attentively.

“They’re not from Twisted Wonderland!” Grim pipes up. “Grim, shush!” Yuu scolds, while you hand the fur-ball to them. Skully’s lips part slightly, shocked a bit.

“T-Then.. Where is it are you two from?”

Yuu shrugs, clearly not as comfortable as you were about ‘Home’.

“Uh- Let’s say, very far.”

“Worlds away-” Grim is interrupted by Yuu shoving their face his fluffy neck. “OI! Yuu! Quit it!” Grim swats at their hair as you take Skully’s attention away. Linking hands with his as the four of you walk.

“I wanted to say before, that our holidays are sorta the same and different. A few don’t even exist here.”

“Don’t bring up Chr- ACK! AGAIN?! Stop!” Grim whines at Yuu’s affectionate gesture.

“What is “Chr”?” 

“Oh- That’s a holiday from where from and it’s called-”

You pause. “Let’s say, it’s kinda like… “The opposite”, or more of.. Colorful, cold. Instead of pumpkins and autumn leaves. We have snow, depending on the region, along with carols instead of spooky-sweet melodies!” You wink.

“Instead of a “Pumpkin King” we have this guy called S-.”

Interrupted once more by Grim’s whines, you roll your eyes playfully. “There’s another one too, where we celebrate those who are…” You summarize the best you can. Smiling sadly, “it’s paying tribute to those we miss. To keep them remembered.”

You go on to another holiday, something along the lines of a rabbit and marshmallow birds…

Skully remains quiet, intaking all the knowledge you gave to him. The memories held within your mind, wishing to be shared. Just as precious as Halloween was to him.

Resolved settled within him as they walked further down the path to Jack’s house.

-

After the fiasco with Skully and the Oogie-Boogie squad, Jack had awoken from his slumber while Skully apologized. 

Halloween was back on!

Music played all around town, joining in on the merriment without a care.

Dancing with everyone, you twirl around with different dance partners. Grim, the fluffy beast, tried his best with taking lead with the waltz.

Settling down, you find one of the stray flowers beside you. Plucking it without much thought, pinching at the petals as you stop at a familiar voice.

Tossing the flower away, you readily take Skully’s hand. 

-

Flowers in hand, you walk back to Ramshackle. The graves greeting you as the wind slowly becomes small wisps. A book held tightly in hand, purchased immediately before everyone left Foothill Town. A melody humming on your lips, adorn in a familiar costume you commissioned Vil and Crewel for earlier. Vil even looked… Pleased at the flimsy sketch, seeing the vision easily. As it reminded him of something lost to him. Yuu and Grim follow a few steps away.

Grim held a can of tuna while Yuu carried a  small basket of candies. 

Ramshackle, alight with decorations of purple and green tinsel, along with Diasomnia’s own decor. 

Kneeling by a few unnamed graves, the three of you place the items down. Heading back inside for the rest of the Halloween party.

The ghosts greet you three excitedly, as your guests a few doormates chatter and relax. 

Letting your frown fade, you smile, hands craving over the edges of the portrait that laid above the unlit fireplace. The mantle covered in small decorations of colored skulls, candles and candies. The familiar pumpkin-colored eyes roaming down from above you and your guests.

-

[YALL IM SO PISSED THAT SKULL IS WRITTEN OFF! Im HOPPING TWST decides to put him in the game and give him a card.I’LL SAVE UP FOR IT! HANDS DOWN. I’ll probably be trying to cope a bit with small one-shot drabbles based around him. YALL I CANT!!! If anyone got my references at all let me know, Im so… AUGHHHHHHH! Anyway, thanks for reading!]

[darklinaforever]

“If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”

“It is because I love you that I won’t.”

I love these dialogues from Addies and Luc in the invisible life of addie larue. It totally represents two different perspectives on love.

Addie, like many people, thinks that love is purely selfless and good. (While she herself can have selfish actions or thoughts) Luc thinks that love is selfish, or at least can be. (Because to say that Luc is purely selfish would be quite hypocritical given all the events of the books and what he does there. Luc is much more complicated than that)

But I like that these two sentences summarize these two visions of love.

Love is selfless. Love is selfish. When in fact... it can be both, separately or together. Love can be something uniquely good and positive. Just as it can be negative. And sometimes it's both together. They are simply different forms of the same feeling.

All this to say that I hate when people try to say that love must be pure, good and selfless. It's bullshit. Whether in fiction or reality. The difference is that in fiction you can explore relationships with toxic connotations without risk, unlike real life or if there are red flags, you obviously have to just run to protect yourself.

Justice for romances like Luc & Addie, Jane Eyre & Rochester, Heathcliff & Catherine (Wuthering Heights), Coriolanus Snow & Lucy Gray Bird (The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Christine & Erik (The Phantom of the Opera), Thomas & Edith (Crimson Peak), Hannibal & Will (Hannibal), Hannibal & Clarice (Hannibal), Raistlin & Crysania (Dragonlance), Sarah & Jareth (Labyrinth), Qu Xiao Feng & Li Cheng Yi (Goodbye My Princess), The Darkling & Alina (Grisha), Mare & Maven (Red Queen), Julian & Jenny (The Forbidden Game), and so so many others...

Not without kidding, there are so many examples in general, but also that I know and love that it is impossible to cite them all !

[literary-illuminati]

An Arbitrary Collection of Book Recommendations

(put together for a friend out of SFF I've read over the last couple of years)

Cli-Fi

Tusks of Extinction and/or The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. They’re pretty different books in a lot of ways – one is a novel about discovering a certain species of squid in the Pacific might have developed symbolic language and writing, the other a novella about a de-extinction initiative to restore mammoths to the Siberian taiga – but they share a pretty huge overlap in setting, tone and themes. Specifically, a deep and passionate preoccupation with animal conservation (and a rather despairing perspective on it), as well as a fascination with transhumanism and how technology can affect the nature of consciousness. Mountain is his first work, and far more substantial, but I’d call it a bit of a noble failure in achieving what it tries for. Tusks is much more limited and contained, but manages what it’s going for.

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys. In a post-post-apocalyptic world that’s just about figured out how to rebuild itself from the climate disasters of the 21st century (but that’s still very much a work in progress), aliens descend from the sky and make First Contact. They’re a symbiotic civilization, and they’re overjoyed at the chance to welcome a third species into their little interstellar community – and consider it a mission of mercy besides, since every other species they’ve ever encountered destroyed themselves and their planet before escaping it. Awkwardly, our heroine and her whole society are actually pretty invested in Earth and the restoration thereof – and worried that a) the alien’s rescue effort might not care about their opinions and b) that other interest groups on earth might be more willing to give the hyper-advanced space-dwelling aliens the answers they want to hear. Basically 100% sociological worldbuilding and political intrigue, so take that as you will.

Throwback Sci Fi

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky is possibly the only thing I’ve read published in decades to take the old cliche of ‘this generic-seeming fantasy world is actually the wreckage of a ruined space age civilization, and ‘magic’ and ‘monsters’ are the remnants of the technology’ and play it entirely straight. Specifically, it’s a two-POV novella, where half the story is told from the perspective of a runaway princess beseeching the ancient wizard who helped found her dynasty for help against a magical threat, and half is from the perspective form the last surviving member of a xeno-anthropology mission woken out of stasis by the consequences of the last time he broke the Prime Directive knocking on his ship tower door and asking for help. Generally just incredible fun.

Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh is, I think, the only thing on this list written before the turn of the millennium. It’s proper space opera, about a habitat orbiting an immensely valuable living world that’s the lynchpin of logistics for the functionally rogue Earth Fleet’s attempt to hold off or defeat rebelling and somewhat alien colonies further out. The plot is honestly hard to summarize, except that it captures the feel of being history better than very nearly any other spec fic I’ve ever read – a massive cast, none of them with a clear idea of what’s going on, clashing and contradictory agendas, random chance and communications delays playing key roles, lots of messy ending, not a single world-shaking heroes or satanic masterminds deforming the shape of things with their narrative gravity to be seen. Somewhat dated, but it all very impressively well done.

Pulpy Gay Urban Fantasy Period Piece Detective Stories Where Angels Play a Prominent Role

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark stars Fatma el-Sha’arawi, the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities in Cairo, a couple of decades after magic returned to the world and entirely derailed the course of Victorian imperialism. There’s djinn and angels and crocodile gods, and also an impossible murder that needs solving! The mystery isn’t exactly intellectually taxing, but this is a very fun tropey whodunnit whose finale involves a giant robot.

Even Though I Knew The End by C. L. Polk is significantly more restrained and grounded in its urban fantasy. It’s early 20th century Chicago, and a PI is doing one last job to top off the nest egg she’s leaving her girlfriend before the debt on her deal with the devil comes due. By what may or may not be coincidence, she stumbles across a particularly gruesome crime scene – and is offered a deal to earn back her soul by solving the mystery behind it. Very noir detective, with a setting that just oozes care and research and a satisfyingly tight plot.

High Concept Stuff That Loves Playing around With Format and the Idea of Narratives

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente is a story about a famous documentarian vanishing on shoot amid mysterious and suspicious circumstances, as told by the recovered scraps of the footage she was filming, and different drafts of her (famous director) father’s attempt to dramatize the events as a memorial to her. It’s set in a solar system where every planet is habitable and most were colonized in the 19th century, and culturally humanity coasts on in an eternal Belle Epoque and (more importantly) Golden Age of Hollywood. Something like half the book is written as scripts and transcripts. This description should by now either have sold you or put you off entirely.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is the only classic-style epic fantasy on this list, I believe? The emperor and his three demigod sons hold subjugated in terror, but things are changing. The emperor, terrified of death, has ordered a great fleet assembled to carry him across the sea in pursuit of immortality. The day before he sets out on his grand pilgrimage to the coast, a guilt-ridden guard helps the goddess of the moon escape her binding beneath the palace. From there, things spiral rapidly out of anyone’s control. The story’s told through two or three (depending( different layers of narrative framing devices, and has immense amounts of fun playing with perspective and format and ideas about storytelling and legacy.

I Couldn’t Think of Any Categories That Included More Than One of These

All The Names They Used For God by Anjali Sachdeva is a collection of short stories, and probably the most literary thing on this list? The stories range wildly across setting and genre, but are each more or less about the intrusion of the numinous or transcendent or divine into a world that cracks and breaks trying to contain it. It is very easily the most artistically coherent short story collection I’ve ever read, which I found pretty fascinating to read – but honestly I’m mostly just including this on the strength of Killer of Kings, a story about an angel sent down to be John Milton’s muse as he writes Paradise Lost which is probably one of the best things I read last year period.

Last Exit by Max Gladstone – the Three Parts Dead and How You Lose the Time War guy – could be described as a deconstruction of ‘a bunch of teenagers/college kids discover magic and quest to save the world!’ stories, but honestly I’d say that obscures more than it reveals. Still, the story is set with that having happened a decade in the past, and the kids in question have thoroughly fucked up. Zelda, the protagonist, is kept from suicide by survivor’s guilt as much as anything, and now travels across America working poverty jobs and sleeping in her car as she hunts the monsters leaking in through the edges of a country rotting at the seams. Then there’s a monster growing in the cracks of the liberty bell, an in putting it down she gets a vision of someone she thought was dead is just trapped – or maybe changed. So it’s time to get the gang together again and save the world! This one’s hard to rec without spoiling a lot, but the prose and characterization are all just sublime. Oddly in conversation with the whole Delta Green cosmic horror monster hunting subgenre for a story with nothing to do with Lovecraft.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is a story about aliens destroying the earth, and growing up in the pseudo-fascist asteroid survivalist compound of the last bits of the human military that never surrendered. It stars a heroine whose genuinely indoctrinated for the first chunk of the book and just deeply endearing terrible and awful to interact with, and also has a plot that’s effectively impossible to describe without spoiling the big twist at the end of the first act. Possibly the only book I read last year which I actively wish was longer – which is both compliment and genuine complaint, for the record, the ending’s a bit messy. Still, genuinely meaty Big Ideas space opera with very well-done characterization and a plot that does hold together. 

[andreablog2]

They should build replicas of the twin towers somewhere in the Bronx or Long Island city. I hate the one world trader center so much. The old ones would have aged so well amidst a changing skyline. Tbh 9/11 was horrible for architecture in New York, everything built now barely honors the cities unique history or reflects the American subconscious the way the old WTC buildings did. Two identical, conspicuous bland buildings that Dwarf everything next to them that’s excessively ornamental….really summarizes America and the ethos of the American economy. The new buildings are all trying to compete w like Dubai and shenzhen…we don’t even have any great monuments of the 20th century despite it being the cradle for the new millennia…what a failure we are as a human species. The Sydney opera house? That barely represents anything. The twin towers really symbolically captured everything that lead to its inception and eventually everything that would happen after. Actually the mall/memorial fountain is very symbolic of the transition from the 20th century to the new millennium…but nothing really quite tells me “late 1900s” like the twin towers. Actually I think the Hollywood walk of fame is weirdly such a good monument to American decadence…fuck those towers we have a side walk with Wendy Williams name on it amongst others

[trying-to-get-somewhere-real]

started following u for Judith Light posts, but now I'm very curious what going on with Marta and Fina?

well, how much time to you have? ;) a fandom friend described it like this: a lyrical, magical, heartbreaking impossible but inevitable love story between a woman who never experienced true love and a woman who was born to love.

but seriously, i'm not going to summarize their entire plot, but at a high level, here are the basic things about them and why they are so special (i'm assuming you have zero knowledge - also anyone interested in watching this in the future with zero spoilers, stop reading now)

marta and fina are characters on a spanish novelita set in 1958 called sueños de libertad. marta's family, the de la reinas, are the core family, and their family business - perfumías de la reina, a perfume and cosmetics manufacturer - the main setting. most of the characters are either in the family or work for the company and live on the company grounds in the "colony". the company sells its products all over spain (and eventually elsewhere) but the flagship store is on the premises with the factory, and it's where marta's and fina's relationship is born.

fina is the daughter of the de la reina family's chauffeur, so she grew up with marta in a way, though they were never close because of the class and age gap (more on that below). but fina, always a little lesbian, definitely had a crush on her since they were young (this is canon - fina actually says it after they get together).

when the show starts, marta, whose role in the company includes overseeing the store, promotes fina from the warehouse to work to the store. she finds out fina is a lesbian when fina tries to kiss a friend (petra) who also works for the company and was competing for that same store promotion, and the friend rats her out to marta. instead of taking petra's side, marta protects fina and fires the friend.

so just to be clear, marta is fina's boss. already a trope i'm obsessed with. they also have an age gap, though in the show it's probably not intended to be more the 5-9 yrs; the actresses are more like 10-11 years, and to me it is evident (and very hot).

from that point, marta starts being really harsh with fina with no explanation BECAUSE SHE LIKES HER. i cannot overstate the shock and awe i felt seeing this trope actually play out in front of my eyeballs and not just in fic.

fina calls marta out for her unfair treatment, and marta actually apologizes and they begin to truly bond and flirt in earnest. this phase also includes so many tropes that i thought only existed for sapphics in fic, and otherwise only for straight ships: marta wipes crumbs off of fina's face when she eats one of the pastries that marta baked for the girls in the store; they pick up a letter off the floor at the same time and tough fingers and have A Significant Electrifying Moment; fina sews marta an apron for her birthday and ties it on her and it's sooooooooo sexually tense; they spray perfume on each other's wrists and smell it; marta asks fina to go to the opera with her for her bday (basically a date, even though marta doesn't fully get what's happening for her; she's just wants to spend time with fina), i could keep going but you get the idea. the rewatch value of these moments is infinite.

fina has always known she was gay and had past relationships. she is maybe the best lesbian character i've ever watched - always standing up for herself and staying true to who she is (and being horny lmao) when it's really dangerous to do so. marta is married, but her husband works as a doctor on a ship, and their relationship is very distant. we don't have to deal with him initially, though he does eventually come back and cause problems. it's spain in 1958 - you can't get divorced. but watching marta realize she's gay because she has never experienced this type of sexual attraction or intense feelings of love before is really magical. watching her try to deny her feelings but ultimately give in because she's never felt this way before--truly happy and alive for the first time--i cannot do it justice in writing. it has to be watched/lived.

once they establish them as two people in love (and lust, very importantly), there are all kinds of ups and downs as you would expect, and i'm not going to get into them here (this is already way longer than you wanted probably) but the constant is that they love each other and want to be together. they are the lead ship on the show - that alone is crazy - and marta in particular is a protagonist and at this point arguably the Main Protagonist of the show. you never question their feelings for each other - it is always only the realities of living in 1950s spain that keep them apart. because they can never truly be together like a normal couple, the yearning and pining and tension never goes away like it usually does for canon ships. all their mundane interactions have a heat beneath the surface. they don't have truly explicit scenes (they kiss and touch a lot and have had a handful of more intimate scenes; i just meant no nudity and largely no bedroom scenes) but everything is suggestive in a way i have never seen for a sapphic ship before. the writers deserve a lot of credit for that. we are a year into this and it still feels like all they want to do every time they're together is get in each other's pants.

they give the actresses a lot of freedom to improv touching and even changing lines - it's obvious to me as a viewer how those touches makes the ship feel super real and lived in. this is not something i have seen much or perhaps at all with my past sapphic ships. the actresses have insane chemistry and bring sooooooooooo much to whatever is on the page. whenever the plot is proving challenging, you can always fall back on them portraying the intense love, attraction, desire, in this world-ending kind of way. again, i absolutely cannot do this justice. the choices they make set this ship apart and you have to see it for yourself to truly Get It. but it's magical.

it is a daily soap, but with a smaller cast that american/british soaps, so mafin is on almost ever day. if not together, than at least one of both of them separately. in this first year, there are sooooooo many incredible scenes; just the sheer volume is unlike anything i've experienced before, and i have watched other sapphic soap ships.

i could say so much more - not sure if you were asking about the current story arc or the kind of open-ended question i answered, but feel free to come back to my inbox if you had a more specific question. they still have time to screw it up, this show could run for many more years, but right now i think it's the best lesbian love story i have ever watched on tv.

[teacupfullofroses27]

hello!! I was interested in your crossover of POTO and TADC but I don't know what the Phantom is about. Would you be so kind in explaining the plot/lore and why do you think it applies for the Circus?? (it picked my interest bc in the new Glitch promo Caine says Pomni's real name is Christine lol)

thanks!! ♡

Thanks for the ask! Honestly- it’s a pretty long story so buckle in lol. I’ll summarize it as best I can:

A famous violinist has a daughter named Christine. Before he dies, he tells her the Angel of music will take care of her when he’s gone. Christine is adopted by Madame Giry, a concierge at an Opera. Christine is raised in the opera, and has recently been receiving lessons from who she thinks is the Angel of music. She takes the place of the opera’s prima donna who leaves after yet another strange accident. Madame Giry’s daughter believes these accidents are caused by the mysterious phantom of the opera. The opera is now also newly owned by two incompetent owners, while being financially supported by a wealthy man named Raoul. Raoul happens to be Christine’s childhood sweetheart, and reconnects with her after her opening performance. The voice who she believes to be the angel of music reveals himself to her and whisks her away to his lair under the opera. Christine falls for his charm and removes his mask. He yells at her, which upsets her, then he brings her back up to the opera. The cast and crew have received notes from the phantom that threaten a disaster if Christine is not the lead role. The owners decide put their previous diva as the lead anyway. Later that night, a stagehand tells stories about the phantom, and Madame Giry snaps at him. At the next performance, the phantom hangs the same stagehand and dangles his dead body over the stage. Christine and Raoul run to the rooftop. She tells him how scared she is of the phantom, but Raoul denies his existence. Raoul calms her down and assures her he’ll protect and love her. The phantom watches them have their moment and feels betrayed by Christine. Six months later, no one has seen or heard from the phantom. Christine and Raoul get engaged, but Christine wants to keep it a secret because she’s scared of what the phantom will do if he finds out. The opera hosts a masquerade ball and the phantom shows up. He’s written an Opera and has notes for how it should be performed, demanding that Christine be the lead. He also finds her wedding ring and threatens her. After he leaves, Raoul suggests they do what the Phantom wants so that they can catch him while he watches his opera. Christine visits her father’s grave, not knowing what to do. The phantom is there, and she finds his voice comforting because of his association with the angel of music. Raoul finds them, and fights the phantom. Christine begs for Raoul not to kill him, so they leave. Christine stars in the phantom’s opera. The phantom kills the male lead and takes his place. They sing a duet together (that’s honestly super good oh my word aauggghhh) and Christine takes off his mask, revealing to the crowd he’s the phantom. Then he grabs her, and makes his escape through trap doors in the set, and also drops a chandelier on the audience. Madame Giry shows Raoul where to go, and he follows them into the lair under the opera. When he gets there, Raoul is trapped by the phantom and nearly hung to death. The phantom makes Christine choose, stay with him to save Raoul, or leave and let Raoul die. Christine feels pity for the phantom and kisses him. The phantom is destroyed by her kindness, and lets both of them go, knowing the mob of cast members are on their way to kill him. Christine and Raoul escape, and the phantom stays and waits for death.

The soundtrack is phenomenal, I recommend listening to the Royal Albert Hall recording.

I plan to make some comics here and there about key moments in the musical because of all the really sweet feedback, and also cuz I just like the concepts.

there’s not a whole lot that overlaps plot wise between the two stories if I’m being honest? I just really like theater as a medium and I love being a part of a show. POTO happens to have a theater flavored backdrop to the actual story. TADC also has some theatrical elements, Caine is such a theater kid (derogatory)

I don’t think Caine is as malicious as the Phantom, but he definitely has a lot of pride in his creations and wants control. He doesn’t seem to read the cast very well and he struggled to connect to the human characters, which I think parallels the Phantom well enough. Christine seems to be caught in the middle of everything, which I think can parallel Pomni pretty well.

We honestly don’t know that much about Gummigoo, but the whole almost dying by the phantom’s hand thing fits 😅

I have the cast list somewhere and I’m working on the designs still.

Also y’all I very much doubt Caine calling her Christine was a reference to POTO, much less confirmation that whoever wrote that sketch happened to see my fanart. But! Thanks for thinking of me (get it lol)

again, thanks so much for the ask!

[corallapis]

‘wait, it’s all the master?’ ‘always has been’: or, So Why Do People Think the War Chief & the Master Are the Same Character, Anyway?

hello, it is i, sebastien, resident master=war chief truther. as you can imagine, i’m currently having the time of my life enjoying one of the few bright gems from the mess that was the war games in colour. i mean, of course, the master’s themes (yes, themes with an ‘s’) playing over the war chief, giving a very unsubtle nod to the wide-held belief that the two characters are one and the same.

but why, perhaps you’ve wondered, do people think that? is it just that some master-obsessed fans see a time lord villain and can’t stretch their imaginations enough to conceive of there being more than one bad guy who’s run away from gallifrey and made an enemy of the doctor? no. come on, give us some credit! i freely admit to being master-obsessed, and find the vibes very compelling, what i truly like to deal in is Cold Hard Lore, straight from the text. and, boy is there a lot of it! to summarize:

the war chief was introduced in the war games, written by malcolm hulke and terrance dicks. (dicks, of course, was also co-creator of the master, with barry letts). based on the novelizations, i firmly believe that malcom hulke intended his character, the war chief, to be the master. dicks also hinted along these same lines.

but, i hear you cry, didn’t dicks go on to write timewyrm: exodus, which shows us a future incarnation of the war chief that isn’t the master? yes, because the official editioral line for the vmas & vnas was that the war chief & the master were to be treated as two distinct characters. this caused more than one writer who personally believed them to be the same to write otherwise in a professional capacity. writers still dropped hints or left space open to link the two despite this editorial limitation.

and what about magnus, the guy who’s well-known in current fandom as the “academy era” version of the war chief? magnus was originally written as a younger incarnation of the master, not the war chief. in flashback, goth opera, and invasion of the cat-people, the character of magnus is a young master. so why did gary russell retcon the character in divided loyalties to be the war chief instead? he did so out of respect for david mcintee, who had recently written an early master story which used the koschei. despite divided loyalties’ portrayal of magnus and koschei as separate characters, it actually in large part serves to conflate the two further, due to said retconning.

in faction paradox lore, the war king is a version of the master (i don’t need to make a post on that, do i?) that was also once the war chief.

craig hinton’s rejected pda time’s champion (ultimately completed & published after his death, by chris mckeon) explicitly depicts the war chief as an incarnation of the master, as well as reasserting that magnus was the name the master used at the academy.

and now also the music choices in the war games in colour :)

of course, this list of Evidence (elucidated in detail below the cut) doesn’t mean you’re obligated to think the war chief is the master (canon, in doctor who more than most, is what you make of it), but i hope it gives you idea of the long history of the character(s) and why other people do!

the ‘70s target novelizations

the essential thing to know about the early target novelizations is that they were written to be self-contained, so that they could be enjoyed by an audience that hadn't seen the show. they weren’t written in the same order as the television serials, and as such only assumed reader knowledge of previous novelizations, not tv stories. for example, in doctor who and the doomsday weapon (aka colony in space) jo grant is shown joining unit and meeting the doctor for the first time, despite having done so three stories earlier and in completely different circumstances from a tv perspective, because that is the first novelization her character appears in. got it? good.

doctor who and the doomsday weapon (aka colony in space) is also the first novelization to feature the master, and was written by malcolm hulke in 1974. it begins with a scene that doesn’t occur in the tv story, where a senile old time lord tells his apprentice about the theft of two tardises by a pair of time lords now calling themselves the doctor & the master:

“There have been two stolen, you know.” The younger Time Lord didn’t know. “By our enemies?” he asked. “No. By Time Lords. They both became bored with this place. It was too peaceful for them, not enough happening.” The old Keeper smiled to himself, as though remembering with some glee all the fuss when two TARDISes were stolen. “One of them nowadays calls himself ‘the Doctor.’ The other says he is ‘the Master.’”

this ‘only two tardises stolen’ business is a big deal in hulke’s novelizations, as we will come to see. and, just to clarify, there's no question of this meaning the master might be being conflated with the monk here — the time meddler won't be novelized until 1988. remember, the novelizations are self-contained, and do not rely on knowledge of previous tv stories. except the older time lord continues, and a little further on says:

“There were tens of thousands of humans from the planet Earth, stranded on another planet where they thought they were re-fighting all the wars of Earth’s terrible history. The Doctor” — he interrupted himself — “I told you about him, didn’t I?” “Yes,” said the young Time Lord, now used to the old Keeper forgetting what he had already said. “You mentioned the Doctor and the Master.” “No, it wasn’t the Master,” said the old Keeper in his confused way. “The Master never does anything good for anyone. He’s thoroughly evil. Now what was I saying?”

‘wait,’ you say, ‘you just made a whole point of the novelizations being self-contained. but the war games wasn't novelized until 1979, so readers wouldn't know about it yet. why is hulke bringing it up now?’ why indeed? hulke summarizes the events and specifically brings them up in relation to the doctor & the master. the facts are presented to us: a) there were only two tardises stolen, by the doctor and the master. b) they went by different names at some point. c) this seems to have something to do with the war games. d) it maybe wasn’t exactly the master in the war games (but perhaps he was calling himself something else then?). it is quite ambiguous — the keeper's confusion leaves it open to interpretation, but the fact that this whole little scene serves as an introduction to the master (he steals the keeper's files in order to discover the doomsday weapon) is, in my mind, quite an extraordinary hint, especially when paired with hulke's novelization of the war games.

later that same year, in doctor who and the sea-devils, hulke again brings up the two stolen tardises, which we will get back to:

“But what use is your TARDIS to you while you’re stuck in here?” Jo asked. “It would be difficult for you to understand,” said the Master, “but my TARDIS is my proudest possession.” The Doctor laughed. “You don’t even own it! You stole it from the Time Lords!” “As you stole yours!” retorted the Master.

terrance dicks then wrote doctor who and the terror of the autons in 1975. additional info is added to the scene between the doctor and the time lord who comes to warn him about the master’s arrival on earth:

“As a matter of fact, I’ve come to bring you a warning. An old friend of yours has arrived on Earth.” “One of our people? Who is it?” The Time Lord pronounced a string of mellifluous syllables — one of the strange Time Lord names that are never disclosed to outsiders. Then he added, “These days he calls himself the Master.”

he uses the master’s gallifreyan name first and then provides his title. again, this suggests that the last time the doctor & the master met the latter was using a different name.

then, we’re given a description of the master, including:

Already he had been behind several Interplanetary Wars, always disappearing from the scene before he could be caught. If ever he were caught, his fate would be far worse than the Doctor’s exile. Once captured by the Time Lords, the Master’s life-stream would be thrown into reverse. Not only would he no longer exist, he would never have existed. It was the severest punishment in the Time Lords’ power.

which brings to mind the war games, certainly intended to be an interplanetary war (with the eventual aim of ruling the galaxy) even if it never really got off the ground. more significantly, though, the punishment described here is exactly what the time lords did to the war lord in the war games & what they would have done to the war chief, if he hadn’t escaped. (note even stories that don't posit the war chief as the master assume he escaped, despite his onscreen death — he is a time lord, after all.) and, speaking of that escape, the doctor asks:

“Is his TARDIS still working?” “I’m afraid so. He got away before it could be de-energised.” “Then he was luckier than I,” said the Doctor sadly. He had never really got used to his exile.

the master’s escape described here could, of course, mean some general, unseen-by-us escape from the time lords by the master, but the conversation strongly suggests that the doctor and the master were escaping from the same event: the master was ‘luckier’ than the doctor because he succeeded, while the doctor’s tardis was captured and he was forced into exile. and that happened, of course, in the war games.

which in 1979, malcolm hulke wrote the novelization for. in doctor who and the war games, a change occurs when the war chief invites the doctor to rule with him:

“Now I understand,” said the Doctor. “It’s my TARDIS that you want. But surely you have one of your own?” The War Chief smiled. “No more mine than yours is really yours! We are both thieves, Doctor. Yes, I do have a TARDIS hidden away. But are not two better than one? While I rest and enjoy the spoils of victory, you can patrol our empire. And I shall do the same for you.” “Our empire?” “We shall rule the galaxy without fear of opposition,’ the War Chief said confidently. “For we shall be the only two who can travel through both space and time.”

this invitation is, of course, very reminiscent of the master’s ‘half-share in the universe’ proposal, but much more significantly: their empire will be secure because they have the sole two stolen tardises. crucially, this is a deviation from the tv story, wherein the doctor realizes the war chief is allying with him because he doesn’t have a tardis of his own, only the failing sardits. hulke intentionally chose to amend his own story to emphasize this, and we know these two stolen tardises are the doctor's & the master's, as hulke told us in previous novelizations. thus, there's no doubt in my mind that malcolm hulke, co-creator of the war chief, intended his character to be the master.

all other master=war chief lore is building off of what was implied in the novelizations, some more explicitly, some less.

virgin books says no

in 1991, terrance dicks wrote a vna, timewyrm: exodus. in this novel, the war chief appears as a botched two-bodied regeneration after his death at the end of the war games, called dr. kriegslieter. as said in the beginning of this post, virgin’s editorial policy nixed the idea of a connection between the war chief and the master. but, reading timewyrm: exodus, there seem to be shades of him anyway. like when the doctor realizes who kriegslieter is:

And behind them, aiding them, manipulating them, giving them the time technology they needed, the Time Lord renegade who called himself the War Chief. Or, in German, der kriegslieter. “Well, he couldn’t have spelled it out for me much more plainly,” muttered the Doctor.

he really couldn't have. just like all the times the master’s alias has been an exceedingly obvious translation of his own name. and then there's also kriegslieter’s plan, which is to steal the doctor's body to use as his own (complete with sexual innuendo):

“Once I have wrested from it the secret of the TARDIS, your mind will be of no further interest to me. But your body…” “Please,” said the Doctor, looking embarrassed. “Ladies present.” “We are both Time Lords, Doctor, our brains and our bodies are compatible. Regeneration therapy is far beyond the War Lord’s scientists, but even they can manage a simple brain transplant.” Kriegslieter studied the Doctor with detached, clinical interest. “To be honest, it isn’t the body I would have chosen but it’s infinitely superior to the one I have. When all this is over Doctor, I shall be you — and you, or whatever shattered gibbering remnant of you is left, will be me. Appropriate, don’t you think? A crippled mind in a crippled body…”

this was, of course, the master’s plan in the keeper of traken (and many others since). in addition ‘we are both time lords’ is a direct echo of both the war chief in the war games and delgado in the mind of evil, the claws of axos, and colony in space.

kriegslieter also calls seven ‘my dear doctor’ throughout, which is not a quirk of speech that the war chief has been ever shown to have. i can't claim it's unique to the master, but i think there's a certain history there. (did you know ainley says it five times in one 50 min long serial?)

similar can be said about the dark path, written by david mcintee in 1997, which explores a villain origin story for the master. though early drafts of the novel mentioned the war chief as a separate character, this was cut before publication (and can be found instead in the charity anthology perfect timing). on mcintee’s tumblr, he indicated that he left the ending ambiguous in order to facilitate other incarnations between the koschei of the novel and delgado’s appearance on-screen, specifically citing edward brayshaw (the actor who portrayed the war chief) as an example. mcintee also posited, in the tags of a gifset of the war chief: ‘#depending on your point of view #the master #or not #does it matter?’ and on another, cryptically, ‘#oh if only i could tell you-’

i think it matters in some sense, or else i’d probably not be writing this post! but again, it goes to show that writers during the virgin era were aware of the connection between the two characters, whether their views on the subject aligned with the editorial line or not.

magnus, as the master

as said before, the character of magnus was introduced in the comic flashback, which appeared in the doctor who magazine winter special for 1992, edited by gary russell & written by warwick gray. it depicts seven and benny viewing a scene from the doctor’s past, where two old friends, thete and magnus, are at odds.

BENNY: Pistols at ten paces, anyone? DOCTOR: Yes… ‘Thete’ and ‘Magnus’. Funny how old nicknames can stick. They were good friends once. A long time ago.

magnus was, at the time of this comic's creation, meant to be the master. there is no connection to the war chief in this story. which is why when goth opera, written by paul cornell, is published in 1994, magnus is the name used for the young master when listing out the doctor's school friends:

“That was when I was young and wild, Doctor. My contemporaries and I grew up to take our responsibilities seriously.” “Ah…” The Doctor nodded. “Unlike my year. I begin to see.” “Yes.” Ruath warmed to her subject, sipping from the goblet. Her eyes never left the Doctor’s. “Mortimus, the Rani, that idiot Magnus. And you, Doctor. All graduates of Borusa’s Academy for scoundrels.”

and, in 1995, when gary russell wrote invasion of the cat-people, he again used magnus as a name for the young master, referencing the master running out of lives far more quickly than the doctor by the time of the deadly assassin:

Polly smiled. “I’m glad you’re completely recovered, Doctor. You had us worried, you know.” “Regeneration’s a tricky thing,” he said. “And it was my first one. Always the trickiest. They’re supposed to get better as they go on, so long as you don’t flitter them. Always used to say to my academy chum Magnus, ‘Magnus,’ I’d say, ‘Magnus, don’t throw old bodies away like you would a suit. They don’t grow on trees.’ Or something like that. Never listened though.”

then, when gary russell wrote divided loyalties in 1999, he followed mcintee’s lead in using koschei as the name for a younger master, and instead retconned magnus as a younger war chief, showing the two of them interacting during the doctor’s academy days. for someone who doesn’t think the war chief and the master are the same (and russell doesn’t), this was a strange move… surely naming the young war chief character quite literally anything else would’ve neatly severed the two, but using a name already established as the young master’s just confuses the whole thing and leaves them even more intertwined than before.

(if you’re a fan of the academy era and strongly adhere to the lore in divided loyalties and so this is a particular sticking point for you, remember that all the academy era scenes we see in the novel are actually part of a nightmare the fifth doctor is having — who’s to say he didn’t dream his best friend as two different people? he forgot which one of them killed a guy with a rock, after all…)

the war chief king

in the book of the war, the 2002 faction paradox ‘encyclopedia’ edited by lawrence miles, the entry on the war king (the master, as he was known as president of gallifrey during the war in heaven) states:

His personal assistant notes that his office is brimming with official business, but devoid of decoration. The only concession he makes to sentimentality are the components of a hypercube, twelve white squares stacked neatly on his desk. Its significance is unclear, but it’s thought to be the War King’s last remaining link with his unfortunate past.

the very first use of a hypercube was, of course, at the end of the war games, when the second doctor used it to call in the time lords. though an allusion to the war chief was not the author of that entry's original intention, the connection was made in readers’ minds and became an established part of faction paradox lore, becoming even more firmly cemented as other writers ran with it. the war king spells it out himself in the 2021 audio sabbath and the king by aristide twain:

THE WAR KING: I have failed to introduce myself. I am— ah, but as we have just seen: names have power. I do not think I shall grace you with one of my true names, Sabbath, no, not yet. Let’s see. The Deathless? Oh, let us not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Chief and Master, Minister and Magistrate, President and King… I have been many things.

twain again linked the two characters in the 2023 short story the god who came for christmas, a sequel to the 1986 fasa ttrpg adventure the legions of death. fasa portrays the war chief and the master as separate characters, but twain bridges this gap in a particularly masterful way.

time’s champion

and finally we have time’s champion, originally written in the '80s(?) by craig hinton, completed by chris mckeon in 2008 as a charity publication. first, we have mel stumbling upon a corridor of portraits in the tardis:

Her first impression was that the Doctor was at the end of a long, thin corridor. And then she realised what the corridor was. An art gallery, the length hung with paintings, from the doorway to the far distance. As she started padding silently along the corridor, she looked at the paintings, and saw they were all portraits. Portraits painted in a variety of styles, from photo-realistic to impressionist, and everything in between. And she recognised some of the subjects. […] Moving on, Mel had hoped for something a little less depressing, but it wasn’t to be. The atmosphere had changed again: it was still cold, but a sterile light was now bathing the area. Then she realised why: the sterility, the coldness — trademarks of the Time Lords. This must be the Doctor’s own people. Pride of place was given to the Master — or rather the Masters: the familiar, music-hall villain in his velvet penguin suit had been captured in all his melodramatic glory, but there was also a suave, older man, his eyes radiating a fierce, evil intelligence wrapped in charm, next to which was positioned the portrait of a young, satanically handsome man with long, sharp sideburns and a thin, beard-length moustache, whose hand vainly clutched at a strange medallion hanging around his neck, as if clinging to the only power in his possession. And then there was an image of the cadaver, that rotting corpse that Mel knew was all that remained of the Doctor’s oldest friend and oldest enemy, animated by nothing but pure malice and spite.

the description of the ‘satanically handsome man’ is obviously the war chief.

and then, the doctor remembers events from his past:

The night time vanished into the shadows of light, as new images, all familiar, threw themselves past the Doctor’s eyes: his tedious years at the Academy, his rise in the Time Lord hierarchy, his flight from Gallifrey, the early years of his exile, the planet of the War Games and his reunion with the Master, the lost years of imposed servitude to the Time Lords, all his memories and so many more impressed their way across the Doctor’s vision, even up to the moment of the present day. Then, abruptly, the vision ended. The Keeper began to speak again.

his reunion with the master occurs during the war games and precedes his exile (which is when his meeting with delgado’s master occurs).

and magnus is once again used as a name for the young master:

The Doctor and Benton managed to glimpse him as he raced past. He was young, with a curving moustache and a dark, haughty face accustomed to obedience but now shadowed and twisted by fear. He ran onwards without even pausing to acknowledge their presence. He seemed desperate to outrun something. Moments later, a group of well-armed and uniformed men rounded the corridor and also hurried past the Doctor’s party, following the fleeing man in their wake. Steadying himself against the cool stone wall at his side, the Doctor watched the squad pass, recognising them as members of the Chancellery Guard, but clothed in armour and dress from the long departed era of his days in the Academy. The Doctor paused, wondering where he had seen that face before. “Magnus?” the Doctor whispered. Benton stepped over to the Doctor. “Who was that bloke those boys were chasing after, Doc? He looked a bit like the Master.” The Doctor gazed into the distance. “That he did, and for good reason.”

for good reason indeed :)