#thoschei meta

[sclfmastery]

Quickfire hot take but, even though I totally grasp each of us having favorite regens of the doctor and the master, both individually and together, as symbols of their ever-evolving positions along their personal and relationship journey.... I will never ever understand fan (or canon...) portrayals that draw such a sharp line of favoritism from the characters themselves.

Missy said "they're all the Doctor to me" when recalling a memory to Clara, and to me that encapsulates the enduring nature of their intense bond. To me that is THE line. Regeneration is a form of death and rebirth, but certain core traits are immutable, particularly to two people who are narrative foils, who have known each other for centuries (or possibly millennia) and keep being thrown together by fate again and again and again.

Bottom line is, every Doctor is the same person, and so is every Master. Acting as though one of them only cares for select versions of the other is just so strange to me. They aren't us. To them, it's just like loving (or hating, or both) someone through the eras of their life. Their same life, broken down into stages od evolution and devolution. It's the same person.

I can point to the exact episode (a lol very polarizing episode in Series 10) where I think this "they're not the same person from face to face" trend got exponentially more pronounced, but anyone who knows me knows what that episode is. I truly believe it's a disservice to every version of every Doctor and Master involved.

And I really don't think that Spydoc, which came soon thereafter, is just the playing-out of the consequences of a MASSIVE miscommunication between soul mates. It IS that, but not JUST. I think all of the writing about Thoschei that followed the exacerbating episode was trying to force this inaccurate distortion, this illusion of separateness, which is part of what made the events in Power of the Doctor so painful to Thoschei fans. The Doctor walked away from the Master (literally and figuratively, ironically inviting his inevitable despair--and her own demise) partly out of understandable hurt and rage and caution, but also out of a cold, repulsed misunderstanding: "Missy was willing to change and you regressed, you're a different person than she was, and you have angered me to the point of indifference; I am able to turn off caring about you because you are unrecognizable from her, the version of you that I could control save."

Maybe Whittaker's response is intended by Chibnall: we're supposed to recognize that she's wrong but HAS to be in order to survive another betrayal by the Master, which is what makes it all so tragic.

But I think fan reception has taken the whole thing ( "each Doctor and each Master is an entirely discrete self-contained being") too far, and it bothers me, so much, I think, because it's a trope that enforces the idea that love is transactional and contingent (in such a way that also perhaps unwittingly targets the socially, culturally, and economically marginalized). If you're the "good, small, manageable version" of yourself, then you're easier to love, and it's worth the investment. Otherwise, "you gambled and you lost," and you deserve to die lying in the filth of your own poor decisions. I get why that's an appealing, vindicting plot device, from the POV of an audience member who has felt hurt or even abused IRL. I understand it, I've BEEN the Doctor many times. It just doesn't sit well with me. Maybe that's just me. I could be at peace with that, as a Whovian :P.

But, in-universe, it's based on a premise that's factually erroneous! Dhawan's Master IS Missy IS Delgado IS Simm IS Jacobi IS Ainley IS Roberts IS Beevers etc etc etc. Just as Whittaker's Doctor is a RESPONSE to Capaldi's, but ALSO still IS Capaldi's. And Tennant's. And Baker's (x2). And Eccleston's. And Gatwa's. And Pertwee's. Etc etc. Dhawan's Master was the Prime Minister of the UK and also made chairs that eat people and also cried remembering the names of people she killed. It's the SAME PERSON.

Lol, not quickfire at all. It's an old bone to pick, I know. I just can't stop finding the whole trope...very itchy.

(ok to reblog...dunno if anyone would, LOL, but feel free to reblog and to comment).

I'm gonna tag some ppl I know I've chatted about this with before to see if there are new insights. And feel completely free to disagree with me on any count. @natalunasans @mostincrediblechange @drummingncise @modernwizard @nickcagestrufflehog @rearranging-deck-chairs @koschei-no-more @likeacharacterinamusical

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

the funny thing with the master is that theyre the person in the universe best fit to tell the doctor it isnt about you which makes them look in waves like really sensible and level-headed and stable the problem is then that theres a second part to that sentence which is it should be about me instead and it’s that part exactly that reveals kinda like a magic trick the ways in which theyre actually so amazingly violently unwell that now suddenly the doctor looks like the reasonable one again

[dandelionjack]

missy doesn’t understand that she’s in the wrong genre. she believes she’s in a darkly alluring gothic romance instead of an optimistic sci-fi show. in her genre, gifting your estranged ex/enemy/lover/best friend/twin flame an indestructible undead army to prove to him that your will to power is identical is the most romantic gesture imaginable. it’s victory via surrender, it’s control through abdication. all her scheming to “corrupt” him, to demonstrate that they’re the same deep down, that his sanctimonious morality is nothing but a method of keeping his own conscience clean, that’s the hannibal gene, the lestat gene (*obviously the dynamics aren’t 1-to-1 similar, but… close enough) and missy’s tragedy in death in heaven is in that, within the narrative format she’s trapped in, she can never succeed

[causalityparadoxes]

I am absolutely incorporating the "Moon and the President's wife poem" into my understanding of the Doctor and the Master btw.

I went down to the beach and there she stood. Dark and tall at the edge of the woods.

"The sky's too big, I'm scared," I cried.

She replied "Young man, don't you know there's more to life than the Moon and the President's wife?"

I cant help but read it as a snippet of a conversation. The Doctor and Master talking after the incident with the Moon and the President's wife daughter. Both still on Gallifrey. Both rebels, causing so much trouble but not yet taking the step to leave.

The sky is too big. The universe too wide. I'm scared to leave. The young man on the beach, clearly the Doctor. Young and afraid, the boy who ran away from what he saw in the Schism. Who wants adventure but had stayed content to mess around with Presidents daughters. Who needed a push to steal that Tardis and run away.

Then the other. On the edge of the woods, already on the cusp of the unknown (Woods are always an adventure in stories). One foot already out the door. A dark and tall figure, telling the one on the beach to just come on. Don't you know there is more to life than the Moon and the President's wife?

The Master, abstracted through the story as Missy. The one who lied about who he stole. The figure who stood in the woods, and who fell in the woods. Just on the cusp of everything.

A promise to run, there's so much more, lets find out what lies in that big sky.

A promise that was never acted on.

A series of events abstracted through layers of fiction, shabogan rumour, and fairytale. A story that helped the Doctor calm down right before death, twice. When nothing else could.

Even now after everything, being saved and kept alive by thoughts of the Master.

I cannot and will not ever shut up about it.

[roxannepolice]

I think one of the most headscratching to me aspects of thoschei fan interpretations - and to be fair, writing, lately - is the chaos-order thing. That's probably because both the writers and the fandom immediately slap moral values on what are fundamentally amoral states. There can be disagreements about which is good and which is bad and which character is which as a result of the moral association, but like. It's always about what the show is trying to tell you is the better way to live because "What would the Doctor do" has become an unironic life coaching advice.

Meanwhile, from philosophical, physical and cognitive perspective it's been spelled out by Eight:

I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there.

and Ten:

No, but that's what you do. The human race makes sense out of chaos. Marking it out with weddings and Christmas and calendars. This whole process is beautiful, but only if it's being observed.

and Terry Pratchett:

Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history...ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it's not history. It's just...well, things happening one after another.

and Hesiod:

First it was Chaos, and next broad-bosomed Earth.

Chaos isn't eviler because scary and ununderstandable nor is it gooder because society wants to me do stuff, man. It's more primordial. It's the objective state of things without a subject to perceive them. Yes, there are patterns in nature, but they are results of working least bad in the evolution's infinite monkeying, not some unique order.

What I'm saying is, when you think of chaos snd order as ontological concepts rather than moral admonishments, it becomes borderline incomprehensible how you could look either at a character who delights in a species obsessed with evoking order out of chaos or a character who's whole shtick is control and scheming and say yup, one of these is totally into chaos.

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

plot twist: Ruby is the Master under chameleon arch

[hobgoblinns]

“i had estates” is an insane fucking line. like, here is a dude whose entire species is gone save for the one who destroyed them. and here they are face to face, and his first thought isn’t for all their friends that are lost, or the children that burned, or even for his own family. no, the master’s priority is that his wealth, his status, his superiority is gone. it hits him extra hard now, when he’s literally destitute and dying on a foreign planet, stealing scraps (of human flesh).

and so accusatory — you took my land from me. you destroyed what was mine. you, my friend below my station, the one i took pity on, the one i invited onto my pastures of red grass, betrayed me. you burned up every memory we made there together.

he’s a brilliant strategist, a charismatic leader, and a war criminal, but he’s also a spoiled brat. and so the doctor becomes the one who took everything from him, the target of his petulance. look at us now.

[lokittystuckinatree]

Ok our fandom has been circulating theories on the identity of Rogue. I’m curious what you guys think

[drummingncise]

still thinking about how while i loved rogue for the rogue15 slash brain, it does smart as someone who ships thoschei and writes the master. because 15 was so openly smitten with rogue, openly kissed him, still wears his ring in subsequent episodes. & yet the doctor has done nothing but rebuff the master's attempts to get the doctor's attention. i'm not saying they go about it in healthy or morally correct ways, and i've definitely gone off before about how the master and the doctor have done the exact same crimes, and how it makes them the same, actually, but it's specifically the "let's argue across the stars" line that just. makes me so upset. because the master has never been afforded that freedom. it's always you're my responsibility now. you mean you're just going to... keep me? and i just want my friend back and the whole vault arc. the master is never offered freedom, the promise that they'll always gravitate to each other and love each other even if they disagree on things. narrative foils etc etc

[duskodair]

you know, I like the timeless child thing. to me, now that it fits into canon, it works. the doctor we know (and that the doctor themself knows), is like a construction of the chameleon arc. only the life the doctor has lived, from childhood onwards, is real. there are no false moments.

we have had 60 years of the doctor learning and growing and changing. the facts of the doctor have been immutable. they are from the planet gallifrey, in the constellation of kasterberos, etc etc. we have seen the timewar and gallifrey coming and going like someone doing the hokey kokey. we know the doctor's grief and the doctor's story.

to learn that all of that is a construction based on a forced regeneration to childhood, and uncountable lost memories that obscure lifetimes of pain and torture, well that is an easy concept to rail against. it makes the premise of the show a lie, the bildungsroman a farce.

but I like it.

we learn it through the eyes and the voice of the master, who has spent his entire lifetime orbiting the doctor like a twin star. in it, he discovers that his childhood is a lie and he takes it out on the doctor, on gallifrey, on the universe (because he can no longer be to the doctor, what the doctor is to him).

it is loud and it is dramatic and it is angry. in the master's reaction, I see the fan reaction.

It is anger and it is dismissal. The master sees that the doctor (inadvertently) has changed the DNA of the timelords, and so he destroys them and remakes them as cybermasters in his image.

I don't think we've really seen the doctor respond to it yet (I'm working off memory here ngl).

But the doctor has spent their life being a mediocre timelord, being a rebel, an outcast (sometimes president). They needed the master's help to get through school.

Idk there's just something in realising that the doctor was set up to fail in the academy, in timelord society, because they're not really a timelord, but the base model. But throughout the series, they have been held to the expectations of one, with no accommodations made for the fact that the doctor cannot do things like a timelord can.

the doctor can regenerate seemingly unlimited times, but the council still tortures 11 with it. the doctor is not a genetically modified shabogan, but is still treated like one.

sure, the doctor was something else, someone else (still called the doctor), before we and the master knew them, but that's not our doctor.

our doctor is the byproduct of a hidden experiment, turned into a timetot.

What's the line?

'he'll never make a timelord'

If we see the memories again, they're just more fodder for angst (because we really cannot keep hashing out the time war). But our doctor is still our doctor, and we just get to see them learn that they're still themself. That the doctor is still the doctor, no matter who or what they really are.

and then maybe they'll learn to not hold their shitty telepathy in such direct contrast to the master's.

[radio-ghost-cooks]

EOT but the Master had time to think while it was dead

tags: death is a place, resurrection, tensimm, their little forehead bonk, running, gallifrey referenced, longish

Turns out that Death is very good at quieting your mind. The Master figured that out when it slipped away from its life, in the Doctor's arms, stubbornly refusing itself a regeneration. And now there it floated, in the place where there was nothing. In Death.

When floating around in pure Nothingness you have a lot of time to think, you see. Especially for the Master who, for the first time in literal centuries, heard absolutely nothing. No Drums. None of the wretched pounding in its ears.

And now that it could think, it thought about quite a lot. The Valiant, its (ex) wife, the rest of the tracks on its Take Over The Universe playlist, the feeling of dying, how nice it felt to be in the Doctor's arms once more... Now there's a thought. It had actually quite liked it.

After realizing how much it liked being held, the Master also figured out that it really did want to run away with the Doctor. Like they'd planned when they were kids. Perhaps, if its plan worked out, it might take them up on their offer to help. Maybe they really could make the Drums go away.

When the Master met the Doctor next, it was in an abandoned junkyard warehouse. It attacked them first. Before anything else, as much as it loved the Doctor, it didn't want any tricks out of them.

It crouched down beside them and reminisced about Gallifrey. About its father's old estate and the hills they used to run through. Then it grew hungry, craving craving craving the taste of hot and fat and flesh between its teeth. The Doctor spoke of some old prophecy.

Oh, how the Master hated prophecies, the idea that certain events couldn't be changed. Everything could be changed. It was simply a matter of w- 1234, 1234, 1234.

"It hurts. Doctor, the noise. The noise in my head, Doctor. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Stronger than ever before. Can't you hear it?" The Master pleaded, begging for them to hear its pain. The Doctor shook their head. "I'm sorry." It began to shake, emotion threatening to slip through the cracks and expose it for the tired, scared thing it was. "Listen, listen, listen, listen," it hissed, "Every minute, every second, every beat of my hearts, there it is, calling to me. Please just listen."

The Master pressed their foreheads together; an intimate gesture that served to increase the power of the psychic bond they've had since the two of them were but children. Within moments, the Doctor scrambled away as if burned, a horrified confusion in their soft brown eyes. That could only mean one thing. They heard it.

She heard the Drums that had tortured it since it was small. The Master rushed back next to the Doctor, grabbing a hold of her coat and practically trying to burrow into it. It couldn't bear it. Its one true friend, its longtime lover, its one and only, could hear all which tortured it.

"I can help you," she whispered. "Please, Master, let me help you." What else could it do? It sobbed, "Make it stop..." whining in pain as the sound grew louder once more. She nodded and wrapped her arms around the Master. "Of course," the Doctor cooed, "Of course I'll help you."

After a little while, the Master finally untangled itself from the Doctor and stood up, taking her hand. "Take me to the TARDIS. It's been so long since we've been in one together," it thought, pulling her up onto her feet. She just smiled at it. And they ran.

They ran as quickly as they could over the piles of rubbish, back to where the TARDIS stood, big and tall and very much blue. They had to speed up a bit when a bunch of humans tried to catch them, but it was really just more fun for them than anything. Dashing into the ship, the Master barely had time to shut the door before the Doctor whisked them away. Far, far away.

The Master sighed, tapping its foot. "D'you really think you'll be able to fix me? Fix this?" It asked, gesturing to its head. "I'm rather fucked up." "Nothing, I've found, is entirely non-unfuckupable," they murmured in reply, " and I'm certain that you won't be the exception." They were both quiet for some time. Simply floating in space. In the middle of an awful lot of Something. "I've come to the conclusion that I don't like Death." The Doctor turned to look at it. It hummed, "As quiet as dying makes your brain, being surrounded by pure Nothing isn't all that fun." "Well it's a good thing you're here in Something then," they offered, grinning. "And if it means much, I'm glad you're here in Something with me."

[dandelionjack]

the composition of this shot... finger pointed at the doctor in accusation, bill is speaking the words but both masters are talking through her, surrounding her as witnesses as she channels their bitterness, their rage, their abandonment. the master waited for him. jack waited for him. older amy in that hospital waited for him. bill waited for him. ashildr-me waited for him. but he always came back too late. the man whose ship's engine noise is a sound that heralds hope wherever it lands left the ones he cared about behind. when hope itself leaves you behind, what redemption could you ever dream of?

[roxannepolice]

Getting stuff out of my system so maybe I can sleep. So obviously I loved The Giggle and loved the Toymaker, but as a Thoschei shipper I can't express how important it is to me how impersonal the Toymaker was about the whole thing and while my dreams of old men making out have not been realied, the ghost of the Master hanging over the episode really emphasised that. Like, welcome home cheater jokes are great and I was getting lowkey irritated by how both the fans and the writers were making ALL of the Master's actions about the Doctor.

But I was also worried that with a campy game loving villain that would also have a love hate obsession with and resentment for the Doctor, RTD would basically say behold the Master only +++ this obviously had nothing to do with CC giving the Doctor a literal speech about being better than the Master introducing a Dia de los Muertos villain that has soooo much history with the Doctor but is also soooo very powerful and then reiterating that the Master hates themself and only wants to be the Doctor but can't because of essentialism posing as existentialism. nothing whatsoever.

But no. Again, I am a bit tired of the Master being presented mainly as not-Doctor and I do think that if Ten didn't timelock the Tardis, they wouldn't have chosen their pet planet specifically, but compare Saxon's No. This is my turn. Revenge. Best. Served. Hot. to the Toymaker's cold Best of three. Compare the Master drawing pleasure from playing Satan the accuser about humans-turned-toclafane to the Doctor specifically because it's their pet species to the Toymaker being himself attracted to humans because of their nature sth sth Johan Huizinga sth sth homo ludens and play as the foundation of culture sth sth 2001: SO with bone and ball sth sth murder as kickstarter of culture and play as kickstarter of culture. Look at Ten's addendum of If that's what you want to the offer he makes the Master in s3, emphasising that he wants to understand what is it that the latter is after, and at Fourteen's certainty that the Toymaker really is only after games.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from throwing monogamy at either the Doctor or the Master and they probably both made out with the Toymaker, both individually and menage a trois. But if after literal weeks of holding my breath for an actual cameo I leave the episode fully sated after a gold tooth and laughing sounds and people from outside my Davy Jones' Locker stuck ghost ship notice it too, then I'd say RTD did some really good job hanging the Master's ghost over the story. And that was not just to fan serve. It also made a point about the differences between those relationships.

[cosmicallyavg]

"im the doctor, mate. who the hell are you." is so good bc the master is already struggling with his identity and how its inextricably tied to the doctor whether he wants it to be or not and then some hologram woman rolls up to save the day saying she's the doctor but she doesn't know who He is. he doesn't know who She is. after discovering the timless child thing, it had probably never occurred to him that there are versions of the doctor out there who dont know who the master is up until that moment. imagine how much that would have messed with his already fragile perception of how he sees himself.

the master and the doctor. thats how it always has been. to him.

makes me think of the "i wonder what id be without you" line. because now we have the potential to see what the doctor is/was like without the master, and the answer is that the doctor is/was/will always be the doctor. but without the doctor, the master would not be able to say the same about themself.

he thought revealing the timeless child to the doctor would ruin her perception of herself but all its done is make her stronger. and look at what it's done to him. it became his own destruction.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

13/dhawan: too orange 12/missy: too blue 10/simm: too suits in offices

this is the burden of the thoschei shipper

[go-to-the-mirror]

via @roxannepolice

thinking about time lords and their fucked up little society again and i just realized how devastating the revelation of the drums in the end of time is in relation to the master's character.

because of all the renegade time lords in the universe, i think it's the master who most exemplifies the philosophical outlook that the time lords have towards the rest of the universe. they're stuffy observers, administrators, yes - but this position is one they've decided for themselves because of this concept of supremacy over other life forms. imposed and upheld this idea that other species that lack a time sense are less-than, primitive. and the master buys into this hard.

and i mean... compared to the doctor, the master is good at being a time lord. he buys into these supremacist concepts, this idea that every other species (and especially humans) is practically a meaningless ant in the grand scheme of the universe. takes it to the extreme, yes, but its the same underlying principle. he's a good student (despite whatever chibnall might think) - that one time lord from terror of the autons (identity forever a mystery) (its brax) even says "he did receive a higher degree of cosmic science than you." the master could play their game if he wanted to. he's remarkably comfortable with being on gallifrey/the idea of gallifrey(in eot/tlotl) than the doctor ever is. where the doctor avoids the subject of the lord presidency like the plague, the master is like "well if you kill the president you ARE the president! and then you have all of gallifrey!" and when the doctor destroys gallifrey (nominally), the master tries to rebuild it in the sound of drums/last of the time lords. tries to emulate their society. honor them in his little fucked up way. he brings them back from the time war!

and what does he get for it? how did the time lords treat him in response?

they decide to implant the sound of drums in his head, stretching back until he's a child. puts this insufferable noise, this splitting headache, in his head for his entire life. all so that they may live while he dies. because he is diseased, because of them. he has swallowed the pill, bought their propaganda, he has followed the rules, he tried to rebuild them he tried. and in response he is chewed up and spit out like trash so that rassilon's god complex can survive while the universe crumbles.

how crushing must that be to someone? to have your whole worldview - that you are better, you are chosen, you are special - come crumbling down in a few short moments? to see the revered founder-god of the civilization you have so desperately tried to revive look at you and say "you are diseased," even though he was the one to poison you in the first place?

and as his heart is torn to pieces... when rassilon says "no more," and charges his gauntlet, the master - who has spent countless lives fighting death with his bare hands - does not move.

part of me thinks he does not want to.