#the sixth child

[claraoswalds]

THE DOCTOR + regenerating

[angelxd-3303]

I promise I have more Mario stuff in the works, I just need to get the mouse in my brain to stop squealing about Nimona for five minutes.

[harrowharkwife]

i'm so used to there just being random unidentified bones laying around everywhere in these damn books that it finally occurred to me, just now, to wonder where the bones on new rho came from. y'know, the bones palamedes always tried to teach nona necromancy on.

they're his.

palamedes, who always loved teaching, living on borrowed time in a body that's not his own. palamedes, mentoring, teaching- parenting, by sixth standards, mind you. and that boy is sixth, through and through.

and the entire point of teaching nona necromancy in the first place was to try and determine if nona is, well, nonagesimus, right? so it has to be bones, it can't not be bones. bones are, like, her whole thing.

but they're not in the nine houses, anymore. things are different, on new rho.

they burn bones here. dig up the cemeteries. a society terrified of zombies will evolve to dispose of its dead differently.

the only bones he has access to now are his own. (camilla wouldn't let anyone take them- skull or hand, doesn't matter. they're still him, and she doesn't let go, remember? it's her one thing.)

palamedes woke up every morning wearing someone else's body to then gently place the shrapnel of his own in the cupped palms of a girl who's the closest thing he'll ever have to a daughter and try to teach her- how did the angel put it, again? normal school, as much as possible, for as long as possible.

(but hey, in a roundabout way, at least it's a chance for him to touch camilla again, right? nevermind that she's not there to feel any of it because he's in the driver's seat, that he can only stay for fifteen minutes at a time. it's atoms that belong to camilla touching atoms that used to belong to him, and that's close enough. he'll take what he can get, these days- if she can be their flesh, he can be the end. so what if holding his own bones is a mindfuck? so what if looking at them makes him nauseous? surely he can suck it up and deal with it for fifteen minutes. it's the least he can do— his poor camilla was the one who had to scrape the bloody pulp of them off the floors of canaan house.)

(speaking of, here's a fun fact: we actually only see nona practicing with the bones one time, on-page. camilla's final line in that scene, before palamedes takes over, is none other than: 'keep going. there are some bones left.' ow!)

remember, too, that the only part of dulcinea, the real dulcinea, that palamedes ever physically touched, was her tooth- the one that ianthe gave him, pulled from the ashes cytherea burnt her down to. he only ever touched dulcie once, and it wasn't until after she was already gone, but that doesn't matter- it still happened, and you can't take loved away.

in this same roundabout, bittersweet, by-proxy sort of way, palamedes has been physically touched by nona, too: the atoms she currently occupies, touching atoms that he used to occupy, and never will again.

the main interaction we've seen between palamedes and his mother took place back on the sixth, with her acting as mentor and him as pupil: the two of them studying a set of hand bones, juno encouraging him every step of the way.

we know that harrowhark's "most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding harrow's over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of harrow's wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique."

they're still small for a nineteen year old, but the wrists are bigger, in this new set of memories nona's making. and it's not an inexpertly rendered portion of skull anymore- it's a hand, now, albeit one crafted from [a piece of skull reassembled (painstakingly—passionately—laboriously reassembled) from fragments, manually, and not by a bone magician, from the skull of someone who, soon after death or symptomatically during, had exploded.] and the identity and origin of these bones is no mystery at all. they belong to palamedes, and he's consented to their use for this purpose, and that matters.

but the details are just set dressing, really. the foundation of the memory is the same.

palamedes and his mother, juno and her son.

harrow and her mother; pelleamena and her daughter.

nona and her father-mother-teacher; palamedes and his daughter.

[blood-orange-juice]

You know what's the best thing about Childe doing Zhongli's spear kick in the 4.2 cutscene?

It implies they got their reconciliation fight. Childe never fought the guy in Liyue arc so it obviously happened later. He wouldn't have seen that move otherwise.

[idkaguyorsomething]

Some of these might get along better than their pairings in canon. Others might be responsible for a nuclear reactor meltdown. ¡Pick a doctor/companion matchup that never happened in the show and explain your reasoning in the tags!

[eskildit]

wonder what palamedes’ dad is like. the little we know about him seems to suggest hes just a normal sixth house citizen. took a sabbatical to parent palamedes, not a member of the oversight body. shout out to this man who was living a normal life and then his thirteen year old son became his boss.  

[kujakumai]

trans mokuba basis:

-I don't believe Gozaburo Kaiba would let one of his sons keep his hair that long

-princess in kaiba's old legendary hero files

-His name is really silly and written in katakana; if he named himself as a kid who hadn't properly learned kanji or gotten better taste yet, this makes sense

-waistcoat

[pingvin-king]

me peacefully playing ZZZero: *sees a Bangboo in need*

[catominor]

c. martinus' impressive array of sons...

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔉𝔯𝔢𝔡𝔡𝔶'𝔰 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔡: 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔉𝔦𝔫𝔞𝔩 𝔑𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔢 (յգգյ) 𝔡𝔦𝔯𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔟𝔶 ℜ𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔢𝔩 𝔗𝔞𝔩𝔞𝔩𝔞𝔶

[eemolu]

the winter solstice episode of atla is crazy. aang rocks up to the fire temple and he's like heyyy roku i'm twelve and need help! i don't know how to learn all the elements and the spirit world is a mystery to me etc. and roku goes yeah fine shut up. if you don't figure all that out by the summer the world will LITERALLY EXPLODE. obviously aang is like dude no way what if i can't do this and roku's response is yeah you can :) ok the glowy light is going away i have to jet bye <3 dude WHAT that was the least helpful you possibly could have been to that child. nice job elevating the stakes of the show and providing narrative tension but god you could have tried to be nicer to the baby standing in front of you asking for help

[hawkinsincorrect]

Holly: Goodnight moon.

Karen: Goodnight tree.

Holly: Goodnight ghosts that only I can see.

Karen: ?!?

[dravencroft]

A few days ago our Storyteller prepared a special one-shot VtM session for us: we got nearly blank character sheets with only a name and a few stats, and our amnesiac characters had to escape the Hunters' prison they woke up in while slowly trying to regain their memories and defeat a demon and the Infernalist who summoned it.

In the end, they remembered who they were: Godot aka Alstroemeria, First Childe of the Seraphim Lily and First Finger of the Black Hand; and his sister Miri aka Bloom, Fifth Childe of Lily and Fifth Finger of the Black Hand. They chose to temporarily abandon their memories in order to go undercover on a very dangerous mission, in which they of course succeeded.

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist, starts treating a young boy, Cole, who encounters dead people and convinces him to help them. In turn, Cole helps Malcolm reconcile with his estranged wife.

Despite watching this movie after finding out the twist (the mod commends you if you don't know the twist yet), Haley Joel Osment still got to her with that sweet little face. It was still a shocking moment in context.

[froggyhopscotch]

Just a fic idea I was thinking about

Text on the image: "Allen & Link get doused with a Turn-Back-Into-Child potion AU, because I have A ProblemTM. Both have no idea what's going on, only that people are yelling and chasing them"

[gallifreyanhotfive]

"Theta Sigma," Analysis

Okay, vague background. Theta Sigma was the name the Doctor used when he attended the Academy on Gallifrey.

Theta and Sigma are both Greek letters and have some pretty intense symbolism in my opinion.

Uppercase theta was often used in Latin funerary inscriptions. Romans would often set up the funerary monument while the person was still alive, but if the person died beforehand, their names would be marked with an uppercase theta. Ennius, an ancient Roman author, is believed to have called Theta a "letter much unluckier than the others."

Sources from different Greek periods have interpreted theta as a sign of death. Classical Athens literally used uppercase theta as an abbreviation for Thanatos, the Greek God of Death. Isidore of Seville interpreted theta as one of the five mystic Greek letters, applied by judges to those who are given the death penalty. It is found on potsherds that ancient Athenians would use when voting on the death penalty.

Theta is also found in many forms of symbolism like many Greek letters, but I am using the above interpretation in my analysis.

Sigma, meanwhile, was held in high importance, appearing in architecture and coins. The word "sigma" is probably derived from the word "sig-jo" or "I hiss." Hissing is typically used by animals as a warning to predators. They hiss when they feel uncomfortable or frightened.

However, I'm sure people are more familiar with sigma in terms of mathematics. Uppercase sigma as the operator for summation, and lowercase as standard deviation of some population or probability distribution. It has also been used as a symbol for a ton of other fields from physics, chemistry, and biology to linguistics, accounting, and macroeconomics (but those meanings are more obscure in my opinion and will therefore be excluded from my analysis).

In any case, whenever I see Theta Sigma written out on audiobook cover (like in The Trial of the Valeyard) or in that stone River carved it into (in The Pandorica Opens), it is always the uppercase form. For that reason:

Theta: an unlucky letter; associated with death; a brand for criminals facing the death penalty

Sigma: hissing (a technique used by animals when frightened to ward off predators); an operator for summation

Considering all of this, it is an interesting name for the Doctor to go by in his youth. If the uppercase Theta was used to symbolize death in Latin funerary inscriptions and was used in Athens to vote on and brand those awaiting execution, the "Theta" part of the name seems to indicate that they are, well, associated with death and potentially awaiting execution.

But where did he get this name? Who started calling him it? Given the recent season, could it be possible that he was given that label by the Division? Considering what the CIA had Vansell up to in his youth (I'm not sure how the Division and the CIA relate to each other, but there probably is some link), I'm willing to bet that that name was given to him because of the foreknowledge of what the Doctor would do in the future or perhaps knowledge of what he's already done in the past.

And Sigma, can't forget that. The hissing a scared animal does to frighten off predators. The operator for summation. Could that represent, perhaps, some deep, core fear of the Division and of those who hurt the Doctor in their youth? Fear that they can't even remember because of the mind wipes? A summation of all the fear the Doctor has felt from those who experimented on them and hurt them and killed them, and that fear continues even to that day since his nickname itself is a brand marking him for execution at some point in his timeline (Two to Three anyone? Six's trial? Rassilon was ready to have Twelve killed once he was no longer in the controlled environment of the Confession Dial and still refusing to tell him what he wanted to know).

And what exactly would someone do if they were constantly being chased by death itself, if they were afraid of something but could not remember precisely why?

They would run away, and they would never, never stop.