"I swear that guy never even graduated??" you mutter under your breath, as you gaze up at the eleventh statue of them you've seen this week.

imagining the POV of some academy-era timelord who got lost for a few thousand years and comes back to find that the Lungbarrow kid that was failing every class is practically a deity to like half of the universe

Do you think Ian and Barbara fully understand that without them the universe would cease to exist

Shoutout to greatest show in the galaxy for being the first doctor who episode to make me go "hey what the hell did i just watch"

Ah but OP is forgetting that in 2024AD, some construction workers favoured lemon yellow objects, suggesting a religious schism between groups who believed their mysterious goddess, Osha, was appeased by different colours; or, possibly, the existance of rival political factions

construction workers were a superstitious organization who thought orange objects could ward off vehicles, or even control people.

The Doctor: a mysterious evil genius who I feel oddly drawn to?

The Master: you fool!!!!

The Doctor: KOSCHEI the evil genius?!?

I'm okay with the the fourteenth Doctor being the Tenth returned, even tho I was anoyed at first*(see tags), because as soon as I thought about it I realised it's absolutely what would happen.

It's been established cannon since the 70s that female time lords - and only female time lords - can control their regenerations. Thirteen got a shot that she didn't know if she'd ever get again: for all she knew, this might be her one chance to have agency over regeneration, which is repeatedly shown to be this incredibly traumatic process that involves losing memories, personality traits, and much of the sense of who you are. So it's this extraordinary moment where for once, she gets to be in control, even if semi-consciously.

And there's the vestiges of the Tenth Doctor's self, somewhere locked inside of her, ready to be reawoken. The one who was most reluctant to go, who feared death the most, and who died feeling like he still had so much left to do. Of course she would chose to give him the chance to finally feel like he'd reached the end of his journey, rather than be wrenched from it midway. And we see that sense of closure so beautifully: even if they hadn't done the bi-generation thing, he gets to finally open up to Donna, to be real and warm and vulnerable with her, to be less of the facade and more of the person behind it.

Project hail mary and the martian act as perfect counterparts to each other because they both illuminate how much people need one another, one begining by showing that collaboration and the other begining showing its absence. In one story we have Mark Watney's searing loneliness at being the only man on an entire planet; the exhausting reality that every time something goes wrong, he has to save himself; and the terror that results from that (much downplayed by the film), almost verging on paranoia: Mars won't stop trying to kill me. And on the other side, we have Rocky and Grace's joy at finding another person adrift in space, the many times they save each other, and how clear it is that they wouldn't be able to succeed without each other's help, the microbiologist and the engineer whose skill sets complete each other, and who love to the point of self-sacrifice.

And of course, both stories end the same way: the crew of the Hermes mutinying in order to return and save Mark, Grace giving up any hope of seeing earth again to return and save Rocky. I like that in both stories, the rescuers do not face certain death: there is no way out of the fact that the course they thought their lives would take will be forever altered by their choices. Once you have turned back for someone, you are not able to travel the same road again: to save someone is to be changed by them.

Obsessed with characters whose self-worth is so low that it impacts their ability to see their own destruction as a tragedy.

This is about the bit in the mdzs where Xian says "I'll do what I do best - be the sacrifice" and the bit in homestuck where Davesprite says "I'll do what I always do - go back and save them" and the bit in gravity falls where Stan says "my mind isn't good for much anyway."

Okay I'm. Too obsessed with this glitter filter so. Glittery Vriska for yall •*☆°

The absolutely delicious irony where Catra and Jiang Cheng are clearly both fully aware that the systems they are supporting are corrupt and are deeply unhappy within them, but are furious with those who managed to get out - even framing it as 'abandonment and betrayal' - because they have sold their souls to be at the top of the structure rather than crushed under it and can't face admitting that they made the wrong choice. Unhinged ♡

Had to illustrate what I envision literally every time I see this text post

The greatest thing about gravity falls is the way it portrays love and the act of loving someone. Love is portrayed as hard. Time after time, the characters end up in situations where not everyone can get what they want, with the best will in the world: someone has to make a sacrifice for the sake of the relationship. Sometimes a deeply difficult and personal sacrifice, sometimes a small and transient one. But it always stings. And the characters really want to make the choice that's easiest for them! And they sometimes do. They aren't saints, they aren't unrealistically perfect characters designed to present kids with an idealised image of love. They are achingly human. But ultimately they do chose love, in the end. They chose it when it's difficult and when they really want to be selfish and have to put actual grit into making things right. Stan spends thirty years trying to fix the mistakes he made, even though the whole time he's still mad at Ford. And it makes the story so much better and more powerful than it would have been if love was easy and atonement quick and forgiveness instant.

Alright folks it's autism awareness month so let's be aware of some autism ♡

Did you know autism can be a physical disability?

(My workplace sure didn't, despite the fact that the majority of the employees are neurodivergent: our health and safety department ignored my email asking for a person risk assessment for a year because they saw 'autism' in the header and assumed I had purely mental/emotional/sensory issues and didn't need a PRA.)

Autism can cause hypertonia (low muscle tone), a physical disability that limits how strong your muscles can get.

I have hypertonia and it is 100% one of the most difficult aspects of autism to live with.

I get physically tired very easily, can't work as hard or as fast as my neurodivergent-but-not-hypertonic coworkers without injuring myself, and experience back pain whenever I do anything involving my back muscles, including sitting upright in a chair without back support.

It's something I wish more people knew about cos I'm tired of the "I'm autistic" "oh so you get anxious in social situations, understood!" "well, actually, no you haven't understood -" conversation. Honestly I've worked through a lot of the autism-related social difficulties I had when I was younger, but this is gonna stay with me my whole life.

Love to yall and thanks for reading ♡

What fucks me up about Neds death is he didn't have any reason to be there. Duck and Aubrey were fated or whatever to go to Sylvain and get wrapped up in all this but Ned just happened to see barcley in the forest, accidentally hit the gate with his car that night, anything had changed and Ned would have lived because he never would have met Aubrey and Duck. He wouldn't have died thinking everyone hated him. But then Ned wouldn't have been loved. There'd be no Statue of Ned, no "Last Episode of Saturday Night Dead" playing, Aubrey and Ned wouldn't have found a family in each other. Im gonna be sick about this arc. Ned Chicane the character ever.

here’s a cryptid/mystery wallpaper inspired by taz amnesty :)

Wow, I hadn't heard that theory about entropy and time, that's fascinating! Its also interesting that entropy is inevitable and necessary, when you consider the prophecies about the Destroyer (for a long time suspected to be a reference to the Doctor turning against Galifrey to end the time war, eventually revealed to be the Master, could honestly have been Omega if the Doctor hadn't been playing whack-a-mole with his attempts to return to the universe). Prophecy also suggests inevitability, and in the context of doctor who as a show, possibly necessary fixed points in time.

I feel like when doctor who was first aired the writers wanted to tell a story about apathy. The time lords' public policy of complete non interference and the Monk's playful meddling are both forms of indifference towards people: the Monk doesn't care about how his actions might unintentionally hurt people, and the time lords don't care about how many people might die preventably while they do nothing. The Doctor shows up on earth as a bitter, burnt-out exile who doesn't feel too warmly towards his new planet, and has to learn to start caring again, to actively resist that apathy. You see this referenced in the new series too, such as when Donna begs the Doctor to save anyone from pompeii, even if they can't save everyone.

But as the series has gone on, the writers have started to also want to tell a story about entitlement. Genesis of the Daleks hinted at the existence of the secret time lord interventionist division as far back as Tom Baker's era, and in that episode the Fourth Doctor wrestles with Galifrey's belief that they have the right to commit total genocide against the Daleks, eventually deciding that no, they don't. The end of time and flux firmly paint Galifreyan intervention in the colours of imperialism. And as you said, the waters of Mars shows that even the Doctor's policy of intervening to save people can be corrupted once it gets mixed up with a sense of entitlement.

So now you have two stories being told together: one, that apathy towards suffering is bad, and therefore positive intervention is good. Two, that a sense of being entitled to direct the course of history is bad, and therefore any intervention must be done in a way thay respects the agency of people and (because this is sci-fi) the autonomy of events. I think this is why its impossible to look at doctor who and say whether or not the show approves or disaproves of intervention: its been running for sixty years during which Britain's attitude to its own former empire has changed completely. Apathy is still bad but we are now so much more aware of the consequences of the rhetoric that 'we could rule the world better.'

I've only just started watching the Rani episodes and I feel like I don't quite understand her motives yet... but I definitely feel her destructiveness is more purposeful than the Master's raw cathartic release of frustration.

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.

Okay @ozzieinspacetime has THE BEST tags on this post so far

"Time lord is a title & imo every timefaring race has not just the right but the responsibility to steal it"

"Drawing the line at non-Galifreyans feels like something that would happen in canon. we don't have to adhere to that"

"River is a time lord because she says so."

YOU TOO can do your part in dismantling Galifreyan hegemony and imperialism! Fight back against Division! Call yourself a time lord!

XD

Okay I saw a poll about whether River is or isn't a time lord, and the notes are revealing fascinating variation in how people are defining 'time lord'.

I've always thought of it as "person who has been genetically engineered to have a finite core of time energy, sufficient for 12 regenerations" (post timeless child I'd add "...or who naturally has a core of time energy and can regenerate a higher number of times"). Basically, that 'time lord' is a biological description.

But tons of people in the notes are saying they think of 'time lord' as a Galifreyan title, given to the planet's elite by themselves, and thought of as something 'earned'. Basically, that being a time lord is primarily cultural.

I even saw one person say that 'time lord' refers specifically to genetically mutated Shobogan (indigenous) Galifreyans, which would mean... the Doctor shouldn't be calling themself a time lord any more.

So here's another poll: