#the plot has already been plottening

[ask-the-snek-man]

hey gayboy go rest

[Thoughts on the handwritten text vs typed out text?]

[wizardlyghost]

- so the last thing i did chronologically was break into this ELECTRONICS STORE full of SLEEPING ROBITS, which i didn’t think was the case but that’s where the save loaded so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

- i’m actually really glad that’s the case because i almost missed this HACKER MAGAZINE in the basement, which gave me... a PROTECTRON HACKING HOLOTAPE?!?! i tried it out on my PIP-BOY but none of the sleeping PROTECTRONS seemed affected :(. maybe i can only use it when i find one still in its charging station? will require further experimentation.

- somewhere i’d picked up some MISTER HANDY FUEL and forgotten about it, so i gave it to CODSWORTH upon return to SANCTUARY. he didn’t really do anything with it but i hope he likes it.

- finally bit the bullet and decided to go to DIAMOND CITY. this place has been screaming “main plot quest” so i’ve been kinda avoiding it in the interest of sidequesting my way around the wasteland, but i’m running low on ammo so i don’t think i can avoid the one place where i’m 100% sure there will be at least one arms vendor.

- found a friendly MACHINE GUN TURRET along the way (i assume it belongs to DIAMOND CITY) and decided to hack its TERMINAL for the lulz xp points.

- this led to the startling discovery that some of the ascii gibberish in between the potential passwords actually does shit? i’d noticed that sometimes when i scrolled past bits of it they would appear as multiple character strings in the bottom right corner rather than single characters, and because this machine already wasn’t shooting me i decided to try one for the hell of it, and it deleted one of the words and popped up a message saying “DUD REMOVED”. the thick plottens...

- after some more experimentation i think i may (?) have figured it out.

          - it seems that any time there’s a contained set of brackets - [], {}, (), <> - on a single line, selecting the open bracket selects the entire string in between (it only seems to work with brackets and not asterisks or anything.

         - sometimes it also pops up with the message “TRIES RESET”, which i assume resets the number of passwords you can select - i did my experimenting before selecting any passwords and it didn’t seem to do anything, so i can’t think of what else it might do.

         - if there’s a pattern to which selections beget which response i haven’t noticed it yet.

         - it doesn’t seem to work if the bracketed sequence trails over the end of the line.

         - each set of brackets can only be used once, but if there are two open brackets and one close bracket - ($&(*$%), for example - the close bracket can be used in conjunction with both open brackets. potentially it also works if there is one open bracket and two close brackets, but also possibly not given that the open bracket is the one that has to be selected to input the entire sequence. cannot confirm or deny as i did not see an example of this on the screen.

- anyway, that nerdery took way more space to type out in full than i expected (i make quick shorthand notes while playing and turn them into full posts later), so i’m gonna make another post for what i did next.

[megabadbunny]

What do you think the alternative resolution to Journey's End would be if Jack or Rose had shot the Dalek before it could hurt the Doctor, and thus there was no Metacrisis? How would this affect the 2009 specials?

Given the setup dating all the way back to The Christmas Invasion, I think the metacrisis was inevitable; however, there may have been universes and realities where he came about later, rather than sooner. So let’s say Jack arrives just a handful of seconds earlier and blasts the fuck out of that Dalek--I would love to say that Rose would get to it first, but given how distracted she and the Doctor are with each in each other’s sights, I don’t know that she’d be able to react in time, in just about any reality--before it has a chance to go all murderbot on the Doctor. What then?

Well, with no regeneration energy zapped into the handy spare hand, we have a couple changes that go into effect once we reach the Crucible, namely being that 1) Donna wouldn’t feel compelled to stay behind on the TARDIS, so she would join the rest of the team in front of Davros; 2) without Donna inadvertently helping to create the metacrisis by touching the energy-filled hand, the TARDIS would continue its destination to the Crucible’s fire-dumpster and would at the very least suffer intense and crippling damage; and 3) with no metacrisis, there’s no one willing to destroy all the Daleks, presuming the Doctor prefers to keep his hands clean instead of wiping out all the murderbonerbots to save the rest of the universe.

It’s almost certain that the Doctor would be able to find a way to stop the Daleks without killing them, but precedent shows that everyone’s favorite squidmurderbonerbots are nothing if not resilient, so while the Doctor stops the detonation of the nefarious Reality Bomb and the implementation of Davros’ insidious plan, Team TARDIS’ success will be temporary at best. Probably the Daleks go into hiding or scurry off with their tails between their legs or are flung into some far corner of the universe, yay (for now)! However, weakened by its romp in the Crucible’s fire pit, whatever remains of the TARDIS likely can’t tow all the planets back to their respective locations and times, at least not yet. So we may have an extra adventure slotted in there, using Jack’s manipulator to hop here there and everywhere to fetch whatever is needed to repair the TARDIS so everyone can go home. That could be fun whacky fun. Once the TARDIS is back in working order, Team TARDIS hauls all the planets back where they belong, and everyone is happy enough, but the everything is tainted by the knowledge that the Daleks are still out there somewhere, the threat buzzing quietly beneath every adventure like so much background radiation.

But we don’t see any screamysquidmurderbonerbots again for a little bit, which is good, because we’ve already got enough on our plates as it is! First we’ve gotta drop off Jackie in her home universe--but Rose doesn’t stay this time, the Doctor isn’t nursing his guilt-hangover quite yet, but even though she doesn’t say anything, we all know Rose well enough to know that she’s at least a little bit conflicted, because the reality of opting to live a whole universe apart from your mom and your brother is way fucking tougher than simply thinking about it--not to mention we veer straight into the specials, which can only be enhanced by the additions of Rose and Donna (because of course, without the metacrisis (yet), there’s no reason to remove Donna’s memories, and no reason to send her home).

So the plot for the first two specials doesn’t actually change much, I don’t think; we’re mostly dealing with differences in character development, since we don’t have the theme of the Doctor trying to outrun his own misery, since he isn’t miserable since he isn’t alone. And this time around, the whole “pending doom/death of the Doctor” theme is different as well, since see above re: lack of misery; instead of it being an outrunning-the-clock sort of story, it becomes a mystery, just another problem to solve. Additionally, we get the chance to explore the sort of person Rose has become in her time away, the ways these changes bring her and the Doctor closer together, the ways they make things awkward or friction-filled or difficult. Not to mention Rose probably misses her family something fierce, though she tries not to trouble the Doctor about it. (She probably confides in Donna, though.)

But the thick plottens when we reach The Waters of Mars, because without the Time Lord Victorious, what happens here? If the Doctor isn’t stewing in his own loneliness, then we no longer have that emotional instability pushing him to act recklessly, and with his pending doom framed as a mystery instead of a haunting inevitability/punishment, we no longer have that added dash of nihilism thrown into the mix. We do, however, get some friction between opposing viewpoints, as Rose and the Doctor quickly determine that, no matter what, the fixed points in this timeline must be upheld, but Donna struggles to reconcile that notion with her strong sense of empathy and compassion. Ultimately everything goes the way that the timeline/fixed points dictate it must, but Donna’s feeling pretty beaten down, like she can handle a lot of shit but the sense of being totally powerless and unable to help people in such dire straits is a lot for her to swallow, whereas, on the other hand, the Doctor is concerned about Rose and how she so readily agreed to let these folks die for the sake of preserving the timeline. Like yeah, this is what has to be done, but he’s never seen Rose so practical or nearly calloused about such a thing, which bothers him. (Cue the continuation of the internalized guilt we see cropping up via that conversation with Davros in Journey’s End.)

And now we come to the End of Time, which, yep, we’ve got the pending return of the Master and the Time Lords, but now we’ve got the return of the Daleks as well. I can imagine the resurrected Master making a devil’s deal with Davros, working to help the universe’s most infamous screamysquidmurderbonerbotpepperpots even as he works behind the scenes to help resurrect/bring back the Time Lords, probably with the plan to set them against each other and see which one wins (although ideally, he thinks, they’ll just off each other and be done with it). Also it’s worth noting that Wilf is likely no longer involved in the story, since his motivation to get in touch with the Doctor is gone.

Like he do, the Doctor tries to reason with the Master, and maybe, just maybe he’s making some headway, but a Dalek-in-hiding shoots him where he stands, and that’s the end of that. Except you know where I’m going with this; convinced that this isn’t the end for him, and determined not to let this body go (like not only does he want to keep this self for Rose’s sake, but also because regeneration in the middle of a universewide crisis is hugely inconvenient), the Doctor siphons off the excess energy into his spare hand, which lies dormant--for now. This incarnation of the Doctor lives to fight another day, but not any longer than that; when all is said and done, the Time Lords defeated (sent back into the time loop again), the prophecy about the Doctor’s doom supposedly diverted, there’s still the issue of the Glass Case of Emotion(TM), and a companion being trapped in it. Only this time it isn’t Wilf; it’s Rose. And of course the Doctor saves her--of course he does!--but at the expense of forcing a regeneration he can’t back out of. Not this time.

So after the appropriate amount of angst and drama and general feels, Ten regenerates into Eleven, and pretty quickly, things proceed much as they do in the original Journey’s End--Donna activates the metacrisis, Donna and the metacrisis work together to stop the Daleks, metacrisis genocides the plungerscreamysquidmurderbonerbotpepperpots, etc. etc., with the added hijinks of a newly-incarnated Eleven flopping around all post-regeneration-sickness-weirdness-like. But at any rate, the day is saved, huzzah!

But along with his fresh new bodies, both of the new Doctors (Eleven and metacrisis alike) have some fresh new perspective to go along with: it’s painfully obvious that Rose feels guilty and responsible for the Doctor’s death/regeneration, and even more obvious that Rose misses her family, terribly. Oh-so-conveniently, there’s a small window of time where they could go between universes again, in the wake of everything opened up by the Time Lords. So the metacrisis proposes a solution, to Rose: they can all stay here, together, or he will join her and her family in the other universe. He figures it’s high time he gave up everything for her, for a change. If she wants.

Shocked at how much the metacrisis Doctor is willing to give up for her--stunned to learn that he feels every bit as deeply for her as she does for him--Rose hesitates, trying to gather her thoughts. She isn’t so concerned with whether the metacrisis is really the Doctor--probably she was there when it happened, so she saw everything, not to mention she misses Ten like a fish misses water--but she worries about Eleven being on his own. It’s all right, he assures her; he’s got Donna.

Rose asks him about the end to that question she asked on Bad Wolf Bay four years ago, on the worst day of her life; this time, however, the Doctor doesn’t demur out of guilt or fear, but instead, keeps quiet because he feels that the metacrisis--i.e. Ten reborn--is the Doctor that Rose really deserves to hear the words come from. And of course, just like in the original story, the metacrisis Doctor steps forward to answer the question before Rose is even finished asking. And of course, Rose kisses him.

So after a tearful goodbye, Rose and the metacrisis Doctor whisk off to the parallel universe, leaving Eleven and Donna behind to do their thang. Unfortunately, a different timeline doesn’t automatically equate to different rules, so Donna’s brain is degrading much the way it does in the original Journey’s End. However, this time, with Eleven’s bouncy-puppy mentality instead of Ten’s guilt-soaked self-punishing mentality, Eleven contrives a way to extract his memories from Donna without wiping all of her memories of their time together. Which, of course, is wonderful! And Eleven bounces about the place, chattering excitedly about everything he and Donna are going to do together, already planning their next adventure, because by gum, he’s ready!

But Donna isn’t.

It’s nothing to do with the new Doctor, even though the fact that he up and changed everything about himself is more than a little jarring. But after Pompeii, and after Mars, Donna’s had something of an epiphany. Because see, everything they’ve undergone together, everything they’ve won, everything they’ve lost, has just made her realize there’s stuff she can do back on Earth, back in her own time, to give help to those who desperately need it. She can make a real difference, back home. Eleven swallows back his disappointment in favor of his pride; Donna’s come so, so far, and he’s honored to have witnessed it. He makes to drop her off with her grandpa and mum; naturally, Wilf invites him in for dinner. But he doesn’t stay. He can’t stop. He’s the Doctor, after all.

*~*~*~