#there's a motiff here my dudes

[capybaraonabicycle]

I'll send it in as an ask bc replying in tags is too much of a hassle now, bit basically it was one of the best doctor/rose fics i've ever read, and i failed to save it and now i can't find it anywhere no matter how hard i try. Worst thing is, i can't even remember if o read it in English or in Russian, i was so invested in the story and the writing was so organic the language kind of melted away, it was projected directly into my brain. It had a motiff with stargazing and images you see on the Moon, so i think it was rpobably called something like Moon Rabbit, but there's nothing on ao3 with that title.

It starts with Rose and Ten golfing (i think) somewhere in space, and it's early days for Ten so Rose didn't have time to adjust to the change so she's a bit apprehensive and keeps trying to see Nine in him and it was all tied up into the Moon imagery somehow? Suddenly she gets a call from Mickey telling her to come home asap and not tell the Doctor, so she does, and there's Nine (!) alive and well. They meet up in secret from Ten and he tells her that "no Rose wtf i didn't just transform into another dude, i was beamed away from the TARDIS and this one's an imposter (basically confirming all of her fears from just after the regeneration) and he's civil with Mickey? couldn't be me" (ok this part i might've imagined afterwards lmao, but it's basically right, he convinces Rose by perfecrly matching Nine's character, which, for Rose, is more Doctor-y than Ten ever was so the latter has to be the fake one right?)

There's this whole angsty thing about how she missed him and how hard it was for her to adjust to the regeneration, and the matter of trust was explored really well bc she doesn't really know who to trust like 70% of the fic, and then there's the Doctor (Ten, who's the real one obv) who is hurt by the fact that she would just go against him like that but he understands why she would do that, the dynamics and emotions were just *chef's kiss*

Turns out that "Nine" is a unique model of a TARDIS from the Time War so it can shapeshift and pretend better than other TARDIS's apparently and also read minds (that's how it's able to trick Rose). Also turns out that TARDIS's could be male or female (i wasn't with the author on this one) and this new TARDIS was male and our TARDIS was female, so when the dude learned that most of the TARDIS's were gone after the war he came to the conclusion that he had to breed to make new TARDIS babies? (i'm even less with the author here, but when i'm describing it it sounds even worse than i remember, it was much more elegant and i guess reasonable in the original text) Of course our TARDIS doesn't want that bc the process kinda sucks, i guess it was dangerous for her? i don't remember. But yeah, once the Doctor and Rose sort their thing out they have to hunt the dude TARDIS down and get rid of him. At the end he passes through time i guess and an early human glimpses him in the sky like a fallen star and comes up with a fictional story about a warrior and a maiden this warrior was chasing or something, and that's how humanity started making stories.

This fic is SO GOOD despite the weird bits, and i will forever be sad that i didn't think to bookmark it or something. I'll leave this here, firstly bc i think it answers some of the questions you might have and retelling is better than nothing, and secondly because maybe someone will see this post and recognise the fic - unlikely but i can't pass up this chance of finding it

Oh wow that sounds amazing! Mostly the trust part! It would be SO easy to make a companion doubt that the other is the Doctor when you can perfectly pose as an incarnation they know better. Because they're human and us humans, we like to cling to what we know. That concept is just - Idk I feel like it's slightly blowing my mind and now I really want to read this fic.

I agree on the TARDIS thing. In my mind it is uncommon for a TARDIS to have a gender at all. I believe 'our' TARDIS does have a gender but she just ran with it and picked one because the human strays kept going on about it. So her gender's basically 'she/her' - pronouns plus the colour blue with some mischief sprinkled in - or something; you know what I mean.

Plus, I am a tentative fan of the loom thing so if timelords already don't get 'born' I do not believe TARDIS-s would mate for reproduction at all. I would rather assume a TARDIS gets made when there's an imbalance in the space-time-continuum on the quantic level that gets augmented by randomly appearing resonance and then the moment the TARDIS appears it has always been existing since the dawn of time. Or something along those lines. Probably the process can be fabricated some way and timelords have perfected exploiting it. Like they do.

Not like I have been thinking much about TARDIS genders OR reproduction, tbh. In my mind they just are 🤷‍♀️

Anyway, apart from those points that fic sounds absolutely amazing and I think I would also love those moon metaphors. So if someone knows it and could send it to us, that would be great? <3

I also totally get the 'I have no idea what language this was in' feeling, I have that all the time. Not with dw fic though because so far I have read 1 work in German and 1 work in translated Russian and half a work in French and all the other times I strictly stick to English. It just works better in that language for me and there is an abundance of fic in English anyway :) We are so blessed to be in a huge fandom. Although a tiny one WOULD make finding your fic a lot easier.

[graunblida]

WHAT HOZIER SONG REPRESENTS HOW YOU LOVE?

SUNLIGHT

Love to you is SACRIFICE. You are acutely aware of the heartache that comes with love, but it is well worth it to you. You gladly welcome the pain if it means having love for even a moment. You have a very “it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” vibe to your love. But this sacrifice love also equals devotion. There’s something so POWERFUL about loving someone so much that you’re willing to accept the heartache; that your love together overweighs that. You also want to give when you are in love. Whether that be material items, sentimental things that you make yourself, or just more love back; you love to show someone love by giving and sharing what you have.

TAGGED BY:  @hiddensteel​ & @azgedaspy​ TAGGING: @wxldchxld, @conniidel, @thequeenofbeasts, @skysplita, @saviare, @nouhainofi​, @archaeotech, @heavenbarred, @psifyre​, @mythsofmodern and whoever else wants to !!! 

[tyrantisterror]

Today, finally, to the great relief of all those wondering when the madness would end: there are finally some mammalian monsters in the ATOM Kaiju Files.  I know, I know, how awful that we’ve gone almost 30 files so far with kaiju based solely on scaley, cold blooded reptiles, exoskeleton-clad arthropods, and a couple of freaky non-mammalian aliens for good measure.  Scandalous!

Thank god it ends.  Thank god we saw reason.  Thank god there’s finally some mammals here.

Anyway, our first monster today is Mastemuth, a giant prehistoric mammal of unknown clade, because it’s not actually based on any one real mammal, but rather a smattering of them plus some original weirdness.  He’s an asshole!

Our second monster, Glypton, is kinda sorta based on prehistoric armadillos, in that it has a heavily armored tail ending in a club, but also more based on real armadillos, and also wooly because I wanted it to be wooly.  Like Mastemuth, it’s less based on a prehistoric mammal that actually existed, and more based on the concept of a prehistoric mammal.

That’s kind of the subtle design motiff behind these two: as the retrosaur kaiju in America are based on outdated scientific beliefs about dinosaurs combined with pop culture science, these two, who both hail from Russia, are based on the pop culture idea of Ice Age mammalian megafauna: they’re wooly, they’ve got saber teeth, and they’re murder machines in their own unique ways.  While Ice Age megafauna aren’t quite as exaggerated/”monsterfied” in pop culture as dinosaurs were & are, they still get it to some extent - and I thought it’d be fun to play with that, although it’s taken me years and tons of revisions to get it right.  These guys used to just be a giant wooly mammoth and sabre tooth tiger, respectively (or at least a giant wooly mammoth and sabre tooth tiger took their spots in the series).

Both of these kaiju hail from Russia, or as it was called in the timeframe of ATOM, the U.S.S.R.  Russia posed a fun problem for me in ATOM - along with the USA and Japan, it’s arguably one of the countries in the world that has the biggest relationship with nuclear weapons, especially in the Cold War.  It should have just as many kaiju crawling around it as the USA and Japan do in ATOM’s universe.  However, the kaiju in the USA and Japan are inspired by the pop culture trends of giant monsters in those countries - the USA is full of giant bugs and retrosaurs (and eventually some bug eyed aliens), while Japan is crawling with weird Tsuburuya inspired monsters.

Well, Russia didn’t produce a lot of giant monster movies, and as such has no trends for me to homage in ATOM.  What would make Russia’s monsters unique?  It’d be nice if they had a theme like the USA and Japanese kaiju do.  I eventually decided on a two part theme for Russia’s kaiju.  Part one are these Ice Age monsters - the retrosaurs of the Pleistocene.  Part two... well, we’ll get to that next time.

Glypton is also a nod to another person’s kaiju OC, Armadon, a giant armadillo that had a crossover with Tyrantis back when I wrote horrible fanfics on Kaiju Headquarters in middle school.  You can look them up if you want to know more about Armadon, or if you want to see my embarrassing attempts at writing from when I was a very young teenager!  The guy who wrote Armadon’s stories was a pretty solid dude - one of the few people in the kaiju fandom who wasn’t an asshole to me when I was an annoying and stupid teenager on the early internet.  So, y’know, when I say “these stories are embarrassing” I’m just talking about mine and mine alone - I’m not badmouthing the guy who made Armadon.  Cool dude, cool kaiju, wish I knew what happened to him.  Maybe he’s working on his own novel about Armadon.  Wouldn’t that be nuts?

One last note on names: ideally these guys would have Russian names that are pun-y like my other kaiju names, but I feel significantly less confident making pun-y names in Russian than I do in English (I was slightly more confident with Japanese because Godzilla and pals provided some examples of how to make it work, but even then only 1 of my Japanese kaiju actually has a Japanese name, so....).  My handwave is that “Glypton” and “Mastemuth” are their international/USA names, while their USSR names would be Russian derived.  If anyone has good suggestions for Russian names for these two, I’d appreciate the help!