#this is mostly about twelve

[skeleton-squid-b0y]

I'm so insane about the doctor they just want to save people. we see them after the timewar where they've just sacrificed every value they hold dear to save as many people as possible by killing so many more and then we watch them spend thousands and thousands of years just trying to save people without hurting anyone and failing over and over again. they save the planet or the universe or whatever every time but it never feels like a victory because they never get to do it right. they always have sacrifice some part of their morality or their humanity or their kindness or their hope in order to win. they might not give their life everytime, but they sacrifice themself everytime they save the world.

[sketchyface]

We need to bring back horror web series where the protagonist is just a pathetic man experiencing The Horrors™

[bobcatblahs]

Every so often I see a post that says:

‘I feel like the Ninth Doctor doesn’t get enough love…’

And I have two (2) thoughts about that.

1.) You follow the wrong people. He’s ALL a lot of my mutuals and I talk about. That’s it. Maybe to YOU but to ME this is the ‘We LOVE Nine’ website.

2.) you’re also correct because he can never have enough love he’s the best one.

[billdenbrough]

fundamentally disinterested in the recurring discourse about kevin's drinking that aims to a) make it his Specific Problem To Focus On And Overcome when it is a crutch and coping mechanism to get him through a Much Bigger Problem (emotional fallout he can't square with by himself, culture shock, trauma, loss of his extremely wildly co-dependent relationship w riko, losing the structure of the nest, mourning a future he was meant to have, processing a grave injustice, anger and fear and desperate grief, all of which is his Actual Specific Fox Problem) while he builds himself back up, and b) thinks that even if it is a problem (more on that later), it's the foxes' problem to deal with.

like. it's just not.

yeah, he doesn't drink until he meets them. they gave him that habit, and in traditional terms, they're (the monsters specifically) a 'bad influence'. but these are the foxes. this is kevin day, son of exy, whose meteor is crashing spectacularly through no fault of his own. there are no traditional terms to be found here. the framework for it literally doesn't exist. neil comes into the foxes with more conventional expectations—appalled at the athletes' substance use, his horror at matt's trip to columbia, his steadfast and early repeated stance that none of the foxes should let andrew treat them the way he does, and certainly not nicky—and tends to engage with them less as the series goes on and he folds himself into the foxes. the thing about the foxes is that they've all been in pits deeper than they are tall. and some of them got a helping hand on the way—erik, andrew's extreme intervention methods, stephanie walker—and wymack was always waiting for them on the other side, ready to throw down a rope, but all the foxes dragged themselves out of their own holes. often not alone, often not without assistance, but at the end of the day, they have to do it.

there's that line neil has about aaron in that scene that got deleted when the timeline shifted around, when he thinks about how aaron got this far in life on his own, surviving on willpower and sheer desperation. that applies to aaron in a way that's a little more acute than some of the rest of them—boy who doesn't let the foxes in bc of andrew, boy who doesn't let nicky in bc he doesn't know how, boy made of flinching and seeking an escape and grieving the one who hurt him—but is broadly true for the foxes en masse.

this isn't to say the foxes can't help each other, but it's not their job. it just isn't. they'll keep kevin alive, keep him safe, keep him flanked and contained within their ranks. they'll fight tooth and nail in this battle with him, fight to get him to that championship game, fight to get that trophy in his hands. but that's all they've agreed to. that's all they're responsible for, in this covenant they've made with him. he says they can make this happen, and they're going to get him to that final game, but it's up to him what state he's in when he gets there.

like. they're foxes. they've been triaging their whole lives. they hate each other and they hate everyone else more. they're the kids with their backs up against the wall. half of them are addicts. i don't think kevin is comparable, personally; he's getting through a horrific situation with a coping mechanism. that's not the same thing as battling yourself to stop using. but that's not really the point of this. what i'm getting at here is that to the foxes, it's easy math: kevin who can lean on vodka and andrew and wymack and the foxes to stay upright when he's not ready to stand on his own two feet is still a kevin who is standing. a kevin with one less piece of scaffolding to lean on is a kevin who falls over, a kevin at risk of complete collapse, a kevin one phone call away from running back to the master, a kevin one crucial loss away from not ever making it back to himself at all. they're triaging. this is low on the totem pole of things they have the room to care about. they very much have bigger problems, both individually and even just kevin-related. if alcohol makes seeing the boy he knew best in the world and moved in tandem with his whole life and who destroyed their entire legacy and his entire life in one move — if alcohol makes facing that boy easier to stomach, then, fuck, why would they take that away? they're foxes. they've all got their demons. this is what kevin needs this year and a half to let him face his, that's all. they can understand that. it doesn't have to be pretty, as long as it keeps him in the fight. that's the priority.

i think there's absolutely space to explore this in fic and art and fandom in a way that maybe does explore it as a Problem, both that it's an active problem for kevin & that it's something to explore other foxes helping him with (there's a t&n fic that i've been gnawing at the bit to read for months that seems poised to explore this premise, and that's super up my alley)! i just think we're in different territory when we're talking about the series—and its characters and dynamics—in a conversational rather than transformational way, and end up talking about this like the foxes are responsible for kevin's choices. i love kevin day. i read these back at the start of 2015 & he's so dear to me that loving him was the blueprint for how i feel abt kageyama. but it's been pretty weird to see how the conversation has been translating Loving Kevin Day into... thinking the foxes are doing wrong by him with respect to this in actual canon. like that's just not how it operates there

[lostandbackagain]

im blaming it on my distrust of landy as an author but skulduggery pleasant becoming pretty explicitly a story of regret is a very welcome development

from "regret never won war, valkyrie, and sorry isn't a big enough word for what I'm feeling" and "for your sake I'd change everything," to valkyrie's self-atonement arc she'll probably be working on until the day she dies, china's whole life being built upon actions she wishes she could undo, people who didn't say "I love you" back and now they never can, chasing alternative futures until they become self-fulfilling prophecies because they already want a do-over, alternate dimensions where someone made one single decent choice and changed everything for better or worse--every book is drenched in "I wish it had been different"

[being-of-rain]

I've seen several Dr Who fans hate Twelve for what happened to Bill in World Enough And Time. And obviously you can hate characters for any reason at all (as long as you're not dicks to real people about it). But I really don't follow the logic of how it's his fault?

Like the episode itself plays with the idea of blaming the Doctor, with the hard cut between Bill entrusting her safety to him and the aftermath. But as for what actually happened: team TARDIS answered a distress call, and the Doctor stepped in as soon as things got actually dangerous. The whole episode could've just as easily happened the same way if Missy wasn't there. The way it turned out was bad luck (to put it mildly).

I just don't see how the Doctor was really at fault, and the episode might even have been a bit more interesting if he was more at fault. His companion coming to harm directly due to him trying to make the Master a better person (rather than coincidentally happening at the same time) is a really tragic idea. (That's not me saying that the series 10 finale isn't already interesting or tragic. I adore it.)

[wheucto]

object show characters being named as their own objects might strike you as odd, but is it really that strange? with humans, differentiating each other using names is necessary. we're all "humans," so there's not much to name off of. physical features, maybe, but people can often share those...

however, with objects, there's a clear distinction to name someone after. and, why do names exist? to distinguish people from one another. why would you make a name, when there's already a perfectly good one right there? and sure, there's people who are the same object, but there's people with the same name too. they'd probably get nicknames/slightly different names... besides, that's why surnames exist.

[tardxsblues]

Well, you know what, Doctor? This time, the human race is saving you.

[bogkeep]

i did my best this weekend, but my thesis is still not done... i had such a productive day yesterday, i was on top, i was focused, i met my goal... but today my brain was mush and i flopped around like a fish on land....... squeezed out two paltry paragraphs about sun dials and water clocks........ unfortunately my source for this particular section is a very long and dense text, and i have to sort of. extract the Essence. i need to dig up three paragraphs that explain the Things like an artefact from a burial site. can i do it? i must do it. i will do it

[redeemed-wren]

I KNOW Ford has been lonely and has no real friendships and sees a lot of himself in Dipper and doesn't really trust his brother HOWEVER. I do Not Like how much pressure and Secrets he's putting on this twelve year old child.

[the-way-astray]

lmao i think that is the longest ask i've ever received congratulations. i'm on it 🫡🫡

what, do you not normally get forty-page-long asks. is this not a normal occurrence for you. i'm raising the bar for your askers, the cowards they currently are

[doctorbeans]

girls dont want an hd portrayal of cute dates with tifa of aerith, girls want the weirdest fucked up physcological horror remake of a 25 year old game

[melrosing]

My favorite asoiaf fanfiction genre is "good things happen to sansa" cause jesus christ does she deserve it. So I really appreciate u being normal about that little girl 👍

we should all be normal about Sansa. vote for me in 2024

[quietwingsinthesky]

the human au doctors are all ambiguously from Not Great Home Situations but i think twelve specifically was having a terrible time as a foster kid and decided this little gang of weirdos would be his new family

[blujayonthewing]

the great news on the christmas card front is that we've entered the 'I love this SO much' phase, this is for me now

[pasiphile]

Havin' a lil mormor renaissance in my inbox and notes. It's fun, it's kinda like bumping into an old comfy sweater in the back in your closet and finding it still fits.

... a very kinky, unhealthily codependent sweater.