#victorian kei

[witchyfashion]

https://amzn.to/4bh1gYs

[blistexenthusiast]

good night keys

[rooftopdaigos]

babysitters

[lichdolly]

Innocent World - Quatrefoil Lace OP (2001)

[webdiggerxxx]

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[faerymeat]

[chamaelobivia]

[cringecompanionapologist]

Why Turlough Is Rarely Written Well

Classic companions have a habit of falling into Susan/Ian/Barbara archetypes. You have Men (strong, attractive, brave, good at the physical stunts the often older Doctors can't do), you have Women (okay there's actually some variety with this one since they're the most common. There are the sensible women who have none of the Doctor's shit or the plucky girls who love assisting the Doctor but are often written as stupid for plot reasons.), and you have Children (usually girls, but Adric also fits perfectly into the archetype. They're young and vulnerable but usually made abnormally smart to make up for it, with the exception of Dodo because the writers didn't know what to do with her).

Sometimes things can mix. Leela and Ace basically functions as all three categories at once. It's why they get so much EU material. They can fill basically any companion role depending on what you need. Some are sort of vague in their roles. Victoria switches between Woman and Child, not as a combination, but as if the writers didn't always agree on which one she was. Nyssa probably isn't a child, at least not by Season 20, but she generally plays the Child companion role. And, as I said, the Woman companion role is all over the place.

But, generally, Man doesn't have to be male if you're willing to let a girl fight and Child doesn't have to be a child if they still come across as innocent and/or unfamiliar with the world around them.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, Woman evolved (compare Barbara's role in the show to Jo's. This isn't bashing Jo. The character were just handled very differently) and Child was sort of phased out due to not fitting the UNIT setting. Man was also phased out once the Doctor learned space martial arts. You could also say that UNIT collectively was Man. This led the show to slowly transition from three companion teams (Man/Woman/Child) to two companion teams (Man/Woman or Man/Child depending on the team) to the single Woman companion you see throughout most of the 70s. Harry Sullivan was a brief revival of Man but you once again had a Doctor who could do the action stuff himself, so the writer's weren't sure where to go with him and he was written out after one season. The show stopped having male companions (unless you count K9, but I'd put him the secret fourth category of Robot).

The the 80s happened at the decided to have male companions again, but Tom Baker was still Tom Baker, and Peter Davison was the youngest, most physically capable Doctor yet. So, they took the Child archetype that had previously been exclusively female (Susan, Vicki, Dodo, Victoria sometimes, Zoe) and gender flipped it. Adric is basically a gender flip of Zoe, a teenage mathematical genius that stows away in the TARDIS and basically forces the Doctor to adopt them.

But then Adric blew up, but they still wanted a male companion around, and we got Turlough. And Turlough doesn't really fit any of the archetypes. He's not the brave, physically strong Man and he's too generally familiar with the world to be a Child. He's an alien, an outsider to what the audience thinks of as normal, like Leela and Nyssa, but he's lived on Earth for a while and is familiar with it enough to hate it. He doesn't carry that same sense of innocence.

That leaves Woman and though female companions had covered Man before, they'd never really reversed it. The sort of did at times with Steven, since he was sort of a merge of Ian and Barbara, but that was because the writers were used to having Barbara around and weren't sure how to make the show work without that role.

Turlough doesn't really fit the Woman archetype either. The Sensible Woman variant has to have a certain moral high ground and Turlough's morally ambiguous. The Plucky Girl variant needs to either be enthusiastic about travel, or be either very brave or borderline oblivious to danger. Turlough is very much aware of danger and is not a fan of it.

So Turlough doesn't really fit anywhere. Writers struggled to figure out what to do with him. Too much of the traditional companion role, especially for Men, was defined by courage and selflessness. Turlough had to learn to be that way as a character arc. There had been companions that struggled with being brave before. Susan and Victoria come to mind. But Susan was kind of all over the place and Victoria started off being pretty brave before being in constant peril made her a nervous wreck and she chose to leave the TARDIS to save her sanity.

So, you end up with a companion that didn't really fit any archetype and the previous companions he could most easily be compared to were Susan and Victoria.

So, when writing Turlough, writers end up with two choices: to lean in or back out. They could write Turlough in a way similar to Susan and Victoria, intelligent enough to be reasonable competent, but physically and emotionally fragile. Or, they could try to make the character a bit more like earlier male companions, except he's complaining about it the entire time.

Writers prefer backing out to leaning in. That's because there's a bit of a double standard when it comes to gender stereotypes. You give a woman traits more associated with men, it's usually received positively. Leela stabs people, Ace beats up a Dalek with a baseball bat, everyone loves it. And they should. It's great. But when it's the other way around, giving a man traits more associated with women, it's usually based in negative traits and not received well.

It isn't always that straightforward. A female character who's assertive and tries to take charge but doesn't usually stab or beat people up will be classified as a "bitch". Strangely, a male character who's cowardly might also be called the same word. "Bitch" is apparently an insult specifically connected to gender nonconformity. Women who are too bold and men who aren't bold enough.

I've written before about how this affects fandom (and a good number writers) attitude towards Tegan. She's assertive, but not in a beat-up-daleks-with-a-baseball-bat sort of way.

This makes the TARDIS team of Tegan and Turlough interesting. They both play gender in a way that's usually seen as negative. Writers, if they want the characters to be likable, have to tone it down. Or, they play it as annoying and something for the audience to make fun of. They can't just accept it. Which would be the most interesting thing to do.

In my previous Tegan rant, I said there should be a story where the Doctor has to overcome his pride and listen to Tegan in order to save the day. She might not be a STEM genius, but she can be right about something. I also have another vague idea, a conflict between Tegan and Turlough, that would focus on Turlough saving the day by being non-confrontational.

The premise is that Tegan and Turlough get captured and locked up in a prison. Tegan fights with the guards and tries to escape, while Turlough tells her not to bother because the Doctor will show up and rescue them. Time goes by, the Doctor gets stuck in another plotline, and Tegan and Turlough are at risk of being executed. They can't just wait this out. Tegan gets more frantic in her escape attempts and more annoyed with Turlough, who is intimidated by the guards and doesn't really seem to be trying.

Then, there's a brief period where Tegan and Turlough are outside their cells, quite close to the keys to their cell. The guards are keeping a close eye on Tegan in case she tries anything, but they're not watching Turlough as closely. They don't think he's going to try anything. He basically uses Tegan's usual quarrel with the guards as a diversion so he can grab the key. Tegan catches on to the plan.

They're returned to their cell but Turlough doesn't actually have the key. Tegan gets pissed that he wimped out and this was all for nothing, only for Turlough to reveal that the cell is unlocked. He didn't take the key. There were keys to multiple cells around and he swapped their cell's key with another key, so the guards used the wrong key on their cell, leaving it unlocked. No one expected anything of him and there wasn't a missing key to attract attention. He found a way out to get around the guards without confronting them.

Then, to avoid making Tegan look bad for being defiant, she frees the other prisoners and rallies them to overpower the guards and escape, because sometimes the direct approach works too. Then they both have to rescue the Doctor.

I should probably just write this fanfic, but I don't have enough specific details yet.

Anyway, writers who try to make Turlough more "masculine" are cowards and boring.

[the-misfortunates]

✩* m a l i c e m i z e r ✩‧*˚ I haven't used tumblr in a long time! I wanted to make my first post back about my favorite vkei band, Malice Mizer!

[vikkicomics]

@honeybeelullaby I did my best ^^

Haven't made The Terror fan art in a while. Here is JFJ wearing the key for the rockets chest, with a burnt match in his mouth, scurvy bruises, and crossed cannon tattoo on his arm.

[drowning-bug]

Finding out The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde doesn’t have a massive fandom is probably the worst thing to happen.

Wdym I have to settle for the SOURCE MATERIAL ONLY?

[whos-hotter-jjba]

Every jostar who isn’t a jojo (up to you if this includes spouses like erina or suzi q)

Well, there would be a lot of characters, and I've done the JoWives before, so I'm sticking to Joestars who didn't marry into the family for this one.

[plasticsweets]

Ruffle over corset, Fanplusfriend

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Iron lock and keys, late 1800s-early 1900s.

[webdiggerxxx]

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