#and now we have a Gallifreyan Civil War??? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

magicofthepen · 1 year

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hmm i am intrigued by so many of the titles! but also i want to pick one without time war 2+ spoilers. do any of these fit that description? the drowning deep or our minds at war or well deserved frustration with Romana? also please do tell me about Conspiracy Verse, Emily :D

ask me about one of my wips!

ah Scar regrettably all of the documents named with the Actual (Song Lyric) Fic Titles are in my post-Time War series. so yes there are spoilers.

but the spoiler free teaser is: every chapter in this fic series is based on last year’s Whumpay prompts (not in order, I rearranged the prompts). so I can tell you which prompts I plan to use for each of those fics.

the drowning deep

the prompts I’m using are: 1. Harming Self, 2. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

our minds at war

the prompts I’m using are: 1. It Never Gets Any Easier / Nightmares, 2. Headache of Doom, 2. To the Pain / Delirium.

SHORT: Bonding Over Well-Deserved Frustration With Romana

I keep forgetting this fic exists — it’s one of two fics I have that were fully drafted a while ago, and really just need some light edits.

this one was written in fall 2021 when I was trying to write some shorter pieces—so it was part of the same batch of fics as the war outside our door keeps raging on (Scar don’t look at this one), be the lightning in me, twilight whispers, and overwhelm me (or this one). but I think I got distracted in early 2022 by writing prompt fics and I never got around to posting this one? I should get around to posting it.

it’s a post-Enemy Lines Leela/Narvin fic that is about Narvin working on talking about What’s Really Going On instead of letting his frustrations stew and bubble over…..and specifically, is about the ways in which Romana was a shitty friend in Enemy Lines and how both Narvin and Leela are allowed to feel their feelings and be upset about the things she did that hurt each of them.

conspiracy verse

well, once upon a time, you were like. hey want to hear another au idea. and I was like. tell me more. and thus began rabbit hole #2. 😊

the premise of conspiracy verse is: what if, not long after the end of series 6, when the ot3 are dealing with the consequences of their reboot of the population of Gallifrey, a young Romana and young Sartia from another universe suddenly appear in the catacombs?

slight background: young Mana and Sartia end up in the “prime” universe after their Gallifrey is overrun by Daleks, brought by a Vansell from yet another Gallifrey, one wracked with a version of the War. alt!Vansell is the one with the mysterious universe hopping technology, and after he tries to kill young Mana, and Sartia ends up killing him, the two teenagers take a risk and make a portal to another world. surely it’s better than waiting for the Daleks to find them.

story complications include:

there are actually consequences to the biodata reset. which first meant deciding how far back everyone’s memories were rebooted to. canon is contradictory about this, but we’re ignoring Matthias thinking he was president when Narvin woke him up because logically it has to be earlier than that, if the goal is “before the spread of the virus” and the civil war was canonically a super spreader event. we don’t know exactly when the pig rats the virus originated in got out, but after much discussion, we picked a moment mid-Imperatrix as the point everyone’s biodata is reset to. so no one remembers Romana declaring herself a dictator, or the civil war. but they did wake up to a Citadel in ruins, with hundreds if not thousands of Gallifreyans suddenly dead. meanwhile, anyone who isn’t Gallifreyan—namely any alien students who were on Gallifrey at the time, and the members of the other Temporal Powers in general—remember the civil war and everything after. so needless to say, things are rather politically fraught for Romana right now.

they’re hiding the kids. given how Gallifrey is this close to erupting into more civil unrest, Romana really doesn’t want it getting out that a version of herself from another universe—and a version of a wanted renegade from another universe—have appeared without explanation. so Romana, Leela, and Narvin have pseudo-adopted teenage Mana and Sartia, but their existence is a secret from everyone else on Gallifrey. (and when I say “they” have pseudo-adopted the kids, I really mean that Leela’s the one they’re living with and the one who’s actually taking care of them.)

the kids don’t know about Sartia Prime’s crimes. young Sartia and Mana know Sartia in this universe is a renegade, but that’s it. Narvin and Leela have only just found out from Romana that Sartia (in this universe) tried to kill her, but Romana really does Not want to talk about her Sartia-related trauma…..except for the fact that she inherently distrusts young Sartia and has already very nearly told her the truth about Sartia Prime in a fit of anger over Sartia trying to secretly use the Coronet to find out what the adults are hiding. (and y’know, they are hiding things!)

Pandora is back—kinda. in the catacombs, before hopping universes, Mana was contacted by Pandora, who tricked her into letting Pandora put the Imperatrix Imprimatur into her. a sliver of Pandora from another universe lives in Mana’s head, and no one, including her, knows it. but that fragment of Pandora is restless. she’s been cut off from the rest of herself, and she isn’t staying idle in Mana’s mind. over time, her grip in Mana’s consciousness will only grow—until Romana, Leela, and Narvin will be faced with their old enemy rising again, in the form of Romana as a teenager. and at that point: can Mana be saved? is even trying to save her worth the risk?

Sartia’s mother is still alive—and still scheming. in @presidentromana’s Sartia backstory fic, Sartia ultimately turns her abusive mother (who turned their House into a cult) over to the CIA. in this universe (and in redemption verse) Sartia didn’t have the chance to. that means: if Kinnora find out there’s a young Sartia running around that won’t really be missed—because how could the President admit that she even existed—Kinnora’s vampire-Gallifreyan hybrid schemes are back on, with Sartia as the experimental subject. but Kinnora has refined her plans since the last time they went wrong, and if (ahem, when) she gets her hands on young Sartia, Sartia will actually survive the process—and be a vampire-Gallifreyan hybrid, an abomination in the eyes of Gallifrey. and at that point: will anyone stand by her?

Sartia Prime is still out there—and pissed. her biodata is part of the archive, so she was reset just like everyone else. and now a chunk of her life is missing, Free Time (which she was working with) is scattered, and she’s trying to piece together what happened. basically, Sartia is out there, vaguely in the early chapters of my fic Redacted. and she’ll probably (definitely) become involved in the story at some point.

oh, and it’s a rom-com, too. teenage Sartia and Mana are doing the “slow realization of Feelings for best friend/first crush” story. Romana, Leela, and Narvin are in there “everyone has Feelings but no one has said anything” stage. at this point Sartia is convinced there’s something going on between Romana and Leela, and Mana is convinced there’s something going on between Leela and Narvin. neither is quite sure what that “something” is, but.

this verse truly has it all, I’m so excited to discover where the heck this story ends up taking us.

oh and in this rp verse: I always write (young) Mana, @presidentromana always writes (young) Sartia, I write Leela most of the time, @presidentromana writes (adult) Romana most of the time, and we share Narvin. (those are all the characters who have been involved in the story so far.)

#thanks for letting me talk about our blorbos <33 #presidentromana #gallifrey audios #fic talk #rp things #ramblings #asks #conspiracy verse #sartia #romana

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doctornolonger · 3 years

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I have two questions here. 1. What is the worst portrayal of Gallifrey you have seen in any Dr Who media. 2. If you wrote for Dr Who how would you portray Gallifrey. Personally I'd go with what Marc Platt wrote for Lungbarrow, all that weird demented shit, and turn it up to eleven. I love all that stuff. I hate when Gallifrey is portrayed in terms of stuffy politics and all that shite, the Deadly Assassin was an exception because CrispyMaster made up for it. What about you?

The worst portrayal of Gallifrey? Maybe The Ancestor Cell. I can’t possibly say anything original about the problems with the story, so I’ll leave it to the master:

The Gallifreyan sequences open with a clique of bored rich kids dabbling in the black arts, and it’s impossible to adequately describe the crushing wrongness of all this as a plot device. Even apart from the fact that the “bored rich kids” routine is one of the biggest clichés in modern fantasy fiction... even apart from the fact that, for a storyline that’s supposed to bring the series to the point of apocalypse, it’s hideously mundane and inappropriate... even apart from all that, at what point did Gallifrey acquire a capitalist economy, exactly? A race of hyper-scientists who can casually engineer stars, who can access any point in time and have nigh-infinite resources at their disposal, suddenly turn out to be bothered by money worries and keep running out of funds, just like every other shite bunch of humanoids in the universe.

Mercifully there are all kinds of excellent headcanons for erasing how blegh it was, like that proximity to the War was driving things crazy. My favorite explanation right now is that the Gallifrey of the BBC Books Doctor’s “present” had been manipulated by the Great Grey Eminence into an oxbow timeline, a sheath-echo of the original. This has the benefit of smoothing over The Eight Doctors, Divided Loyalties, and The Ancestor Cell in one swoop!

As for how I would do it, I was just telling @aristidetwain about what I see as the definitive trilogy for portrayals of the Time Lords:

The War Games

The End of Time

Death Comes to Time

(If we let in stories from other media, Dead Romance also belongs on this list.)

Regardless of what you think of the stories’ actual quality, the Time Lords in these stories are properly godlike beings. The way that the summoning of the Time Lords inspires such dread in the Doctor and the War Chief in The War Games still gives me chills: you really get the feeling that the fun and games are over. The adults are here, and they’re pissed.

WAR LORD: Don’t worry. When the Time Lords get him, he’ll wish you had killed him. (A strange sound fills the room.) WAR LORD: They’re coming.

DOCTOR: Come on! ZOE: What is it? DOCTOR: Time Lords! Try harder! We must get away!

A narrative disruption so earthshaking that the show gets knocked from the 60s to the 70s — from black and white to color; from the Second Doctor to the Third; from space to Earth — and everything that entailed. Doctor Who ended in 1969; such is the cost of invoking the Time Lords. These are the astral architects, the Lords of Time, the Kardashev V civilization that can create matter and space and destroy you just by ignoring you.

You’ll notice that none of these stories are actually set on Gallifrey: all of them invoke the Time Lords from a distance. And I think that’s part of the key. Terror is almost always better than horror; the best way to use Gallifrey is to not use Gallifrey. Keep it all at a distance with a 10 foot pole and invoke it mainly for climactic scenarios, where they can impose a Lovecraftian impact on the narrative. Turn them back into a force to be reckoned with, and watch the sparks fly.

#ama #dear lord this turned into a long one #the war games #gallifrey #time lords #dead romance #death comes to time #the end of time #the ancestor cell #great grey eminence #dr nyarlathotep #?#the book of the renegade #effortpost

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lucifers-favorite-child · 4 years

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The Doctor: Another story I heard about myself - this one happened at the academy. We had this teacher in high school whose kid went to our high school. His name was Borusa and his son went to our high school.

Doctor: And Borusa was an asshole. And one weekend, he decided to leave town, which you should never do if you're an asshole! And his son decided to throw a party at the teacher’s house. And everyone around school heard about it and we all got up individually and thought, “Okay, let’s go over there and destroy the place.”

Doctor: I walked into this party. Everyone I had ever met was at this party, and everyone was drinking like it was the end of the world. People were drinking like it was the civil war and a doctor was coming to saw our legs off. It was TOTALLY unsupervised, we were like dogs without horses, we were running wild!

Doctor: I walked down to the basement, they had a pool table in the basement. One dude, Magnus, took a running start and threw his body onto the pool table and broke it in half. Another kid, Drax, found out which room was Borusa's and went upstairs and took a shit OH HIS COMPUTER!

Doctor: ... So the party was going GREAT.

Doctor: I’m standing in the basement, and I’m holding a cup of SOMETHING and I’m starting to blackout and I guess someone said “something something police.”

Doctor: And in a BRILLIANT moment of word association, I yelled: “FUCK DA POLICE!”

Doctor: And everyone else joined in, 100 drunk, Gallifreyan children yelling “Fuck da police” with the confidence of guys who have already been to jail and aren’t afraid of it anymore. You know, like the: “I served my nickel! You come and take me!” confidence, but privileged Gallifreyan children.

Doctor: Except ... it turned out that the REASON someone had said “something something police” was because the police were there!

Doctor: So a police officer walked down the stairs and got to the bottom in the basement and looked out over a sea of drunk toddlers yelling: “FUCK THE POLICE” IN HIS FACE! And he was almost impressed! He was like “WOW.”

Doctor: And then he leaned into his walkie-talkie, and my boyfriend Koschei, who is evil, this man is a now war criminal, he grabbed a 40, smashed it on the ground and yelled “SCATTER!!”

Doctor: And everyone ran in a different direction! I ran into the laundry room and I jumped up on the washing machine and I crawled out through a window into the backyard, and now I’m running through the backyard and there was this big chain-link fence and I thought "I’ve never climbed a fence THAT high before", and then I woke up at home.

Doctor: So I don’t drink anymore.

#thoschei #the master #the doctor #doctor who #the deca #koschei #drax dweu #borusa #magnus dw #doctor who academy era #academy era #source: john mulaney #i speak unfortunately #thirteenth doctor

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davosmymaster · 4 years

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To the Ends of the Universe

A/N - Hello!!! How’s everyone doing? Just wanted to say thank you to the people who left a comment/liked the post about this one shot. I really hope this fic won’t dissapoint anyone.

Special thanks to @wonders-of-the-multiverse who has been there from the very first second. This fic initially started as both of us just daydreaming about the Master as usual and well, here we are XD. She was also my incredible beta reader.

As some of you know, English is not my first language, so I apologize in advance for any mistake. This is also my first fic on tumblr YAY

I really hope you have a good time reading this!!!

WARNINGS - Blood, mentions of nightmares, it’s pure fluff basically with hints of angst

PAIRINGS - Dhawan!Master x Reader (The Master x Reader)

WORD COUNT - 6,062 words

TO THE ENDS OF THE UNIVERSE

The dimly lit hallways exploded in a bright white light as you rushed to the medbay, the loud thumping of your heart stuck in your ears as you forced your legs to keep the pace for just one more second.

As Opposed to The Doctor’s, The Master’s TARDIS had always looked quite dark and unwelcoming, almost as if it wasn’t pleased with having anyone wandering around inside her. This time, however, a white flickering light guided you through the maze-like corridors to your destination. It was a big change from the dirty tricks she used to play during the first few months of your stay.

The floor under your shoes quaked as the ship took off, the harsh trembling sending your body forwards and your shoulder crashing against one of the metal doors. You rubbed the tender spot for a second, the worry that had overwhelmed you at the sight of blood quickly being replaced by a wave of pure annoyance and agitation.

“You could help me a bit here” you whispered through gritted teeth towards the TARDIS, the pain in your shoulder slowly dissolving into numbness.

A low groan seemed to come from the walls and the energy inside it. The metal disappeared as the door slid open to reveal the grey colour of the medbay.

“O-oh” you gasped “sorry”

Once inside the room and without a thought, your body automatically went for the second drawer in one of the cupboards.

Traveling the stars wasn’t as safe as you would have liked, and both the Master and yourself had gotten hurt more times than either of you remembered. As years and years passed you had surprised yourself in the most appropriate situations, becoming aware of the fact that you could find almost anything in the medbay at this point; even if you couldn’t understand the advanced medical technology a time lord could have gathered all over time and space for god-knows-how-long.

“I’m back!” you announced when the control room appeared in front of your eyes again. The figure of the Master was leaning against the console, eyes too focused on his own empty fists to be considered normal. His hair was more disheveled than usual, the fringe coated with blood as it brushed across the top of his eyes. “Master”

He jumped in place at the sound of your voice, one of his hands instinctively going to his coat’s pocket as a reflex. The wound on the side of his head was still bleeding, although the oozing flow of blood seemed to have lessened considerably since you had last seen him. His skin was much paler than usual and the dark rings under his eyes were looking much worse than that morning. You couldn’t help but think that he looked miserable, even beyond the blood staining his face and clothes.

“Are you alright?” you whispered. You took a step forward cautiously and didn’t look away from his eyes, trying to find all the answers to your questions in those big brown orbs.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He quickly backed off, putting as much space between the two of you as he could. You watched him wander the room, walking in one direction before changing his mind the next second. You clenched your hands around the medical supplies, the weight of all the things you were carrying reminded you why you had left the room in the first place.

“Have a seat somewhere” you demanded, although it sounded angrier than you had intended, almost like a bark. “You’re still bleeding”

“YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!”

Your heart hammered in your chest as a response. The silence fell between the two of you, the atmosphere suddenly running out of air. He looked like a madman right there in front of your incredulous eyes, bleeding and pointing at you like he pointed at his enemies after stating a threat. He had never glared at you with angry eyes before.

The Master had been acting odd for some time now. It all started with a change in his plans. One day, for no apparent reason, he took you on a trip to one of the most beautiful planets in the universe. The blue dunes of sand under an orange bright sun permanently eclipsed by one of its forty-three satellites. It seemed to be the perfect place to have some rest, at least it was until some of the natives recognized the Master and threatened to kill both of you.

Surely ‘the most beautiful’ didn’t imply ‘the safest’, as the few civilizations that lived there had been at war for more than a millennia. The only thing all those aliens had in common was, somehow, the desire for the Master’s dead body. When the TARDIS set off again, as far away from the planet as she could, you realized he had done the first good action in a long time: he had left behind two civilizations unified for a cause greater than themselves, to get rid of him once and for all.

Most of the time you couldn’t choose where to go, he always traveled whenever and wherever he needed in order to gather weapons or artifacts. Other times it was merely to have some fun, and on some rare occasions you would manipulate him to use his bloodthirstiness to do some justice.

Those trips weren’t as usual now, or maybe he just had stopped telling you the truth about his intentions. Burning planets, dangerous ships and poisonous waters became beautiful trips to sightseeing constellations and the most delicious dinners served next to the colorful Medusa Cascade. No matter how beautiful or safe the place seemed to be, there was always someone or something interrupting the dates you were trying to enjoy with the Master. Not that he would call them dates, anyway.

You used to read him like an open book. When he said “you’ll slow me down” in reality he meant “this is gonna turn nasty and I want you as far away from here as possible”. When he said he wanted to be alone, that was probably the last thing he wanted. And most of all you were almost a hundred percent sure that the strange words he whispered into your hair when he thought you were asleep meant “I love you” in Gallifreyan.

But you still hadn’t managed to persuade the TARDIS to get you a Gallifreyan dictionary with the words’ pronunciation. It was definitely a work in progress though, or it had been until you realized that the Master and yourself had been slowly growing apart for the last few months.

“(Y/N)” he said, his voice almost as low as a whisper “I- I shouldn’t have-”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t have” you responded firmly. There were a lot of things you were willing to forgive him for, but yelling and mistreating you wasn’t one of them.

He groaned in pain then, drenching his fingertips in the blood clot in his temple. Your own heart shivered in your chest at the sight, concern quickly burning your insides as a white hot fire ran through your veins.

“Don’t touch it!”

You quickly walked the space keeping you apart and gave him a gentle smack to his wrist. He avoided your eyes, fixing them instead on the rolls of unopened gauze, alcohol, towels, and those strange alien band-aids that accelerated the healing process up to five times faster.

In a flurry of movement the Master moved, his hands quick to try and snatch them from you. But you had known him for a long time and knew exactly what he was like.

“I can do it myself, I’m not a child”

“I know you can-” you replied softly, your mind trying to convince itself that he was acting weirder than usual because you had underestimated the damage caused by the blow he had suffered to the head. “-but I’m not as sure about the rest of the sentence.”

He raised one eyebrow in response and you watched him try not to grimace in pain again.

“Here” he pulled away from you and walked to the front door of the TARDIS, opening it with ease. The old wood-like doors pulled back to reveal a black nothingness filled with thousands of distant flickering stars “I need some air.”

The Master took a seat at the border. His back rested against the doors, one of his legs dangling out into space, the other bent beneath him on the floor.

“You’ve definitely taken quite a hit.” you laughed, “There’s no air in outer space!”

He smirked with closed eyes, calmly breathing in and out through the nose. “Don’t tell a Time Lord what can and cannot be in outer space. Now get to work, if you’re not going to let me do it myself.”

You took a seat in front of him in the small space between his figure and the open door, one of your legs also dangling out into space. Leaning in, you pressed the gauze soaked in alcohol against the open wound to finally stop the bleeding. The Master clenched his jaw as much as he could, hissing in pain.

“Sorry” you apologized, “Keep the pressure on yourself, I’m gonna clean you up.”

He leered at you, the corner of his lips smirking lasciviously. You rolled your eyes, taking the wet towel in your hands and proceeding to clean the dry blood away from his chin and cheek. You cleaned his short beard the best you could and tried to get rid of the blood clots in his fringe, unsuccessfully to your dismay.

You could feel his eyes piercing yours, his fingers gently sliding across the skin of your shoulder, softly brushing your hair to get it out of the way. You fixed your eyes onto his own only to catch him avoiding your gaze, his attention stuck on staring out at the endless sight of the universe.

The Master kept his eyes fixed in nowhere in particular while you worked on his wound. You slowly opened one of the band-aids and tried to avoid his hair as much as possible, so you could place it on the side of his head; just above the temple. Now you just had to wait a few minutes to remove it. You had used those curious things several times before and although the healing was sped up, the thing never failed to leave some kind of scar. But even with those odds stacked against him, the Master was always lucky enough to never get scarred- likely thanks to his own unique biology.

You let yourself fall limp against the door and tilted your head to whatever the Master was looking for. The sight was beautiful as it had always been, millions of stars were almost swallowed by the black nothingness that separated planets, constellations, solar systems, and asteroids. And even at the incredible sight of all of this, you struggled to find something that could possibly retain the Master’s attention for more than a split second.

“Are you alright? You’ve seemed a little distant lately” you asked again.

Fixing your eyes on his features you searched for any sign of discomfort, either physical or emotional. At the lack of response your gaze started to wander, his hand catching your attention as he played with something inside of his coat pocket.

He was likely twisting and curling the TCE between his fingers. It was a trait you had noticed during your time travelling with him, his fingers fidgeting without fail whenever he was deep in thought. It happened every time, he would either tap four beats on any surface he could find or get something to entertain his restless fingers with, most of the time the ‘thing’ being his TCE.

The memories from the day filled your head then. He had looked distant the whole time, from the very first second he landed the TARDIS in one of the three planets that formed the solar system of one of the seventeen suns in Kasterborous. It was the closest you had ever been to Gallifrey and, still, it was far enough to not be able to admire the beautiful planet that had watched the Doctor and the Master grow into adults for centuries.

“I’m just planning my next scheme to trap the Doctor”

You nodded, although you didn’t believe a thing of what he said.

The words of what you had been thinking for endless nights poured from your lips before your mind could make up an excuse for his strange behavior, like all the other times. No one could blame you, after all you were just trying to protect your heart and mind from shattering.

“Is it me?” you asked finally, your voice betraying you and showing more emotion than what you had intended.

The Master suddenly turned his curious gaze to you. So he was paying attention then…

“Don’t you think I haven’t spotted how distant you’ve been lately” you added, although lately didn’t seem to be the right word. Obviously you had realized how much time he spent alone in the library and how his visits to the room you both shared were becoming less and less frequent. He always claimed he didn’t need to sleep as much, but you had been apart for enough time for you to notice that it was just a cheap excuse to not be there.

“Do you not want me to be here anymore?”

He frowned at your words.

“W-wha-”

“Are you still happy?” you asked with a hoarse voice, feeling the familiar weight of tears building up in your eyes at the low wheezing sound of the silence. You clenched your jaw and tried to swallow the tears. “Don’t lie to me.”

He just stared at you in silence for a second, mouthing like a fish out of water, until he finally blinked and tried to make a sound.

“I-is not-”

“Just-” you cut him off, feeling again like a lie was about to spill from his lips. “-you seem sad, distant, you’re not happy and you’re lying to me.”

“No-NO!” You snapped when he tried to talk again, “Don’t try to deny it, I can tell. I know you”

“So…” Anxiously you took a shallow shaky breath “It has something to do with me, doesn’t it?”

He pressed his lips together for a second but soon relaxed again. Changing his expression, the shimmer in his eyes shifted as he smirked slightly, the dark circles under his eyes failing to achieve the frightening look he was striving for. Maybe it would have worked with anyone else, but not with you.

“You humans are so vain, always thinking the universe spins around you.”

“I’m being serious, Koschei”

He took a breathless gasp, almost as if he had been hit. The name of a time lord was one of the biggest, best-kept secrets in the universe. Only a handful of people had known (or would ever know) the real name of the Doctor, and due to the Master’s lack of sympathy and his trouble to connect with people to an emotional level, even less had known or ever would know his.

‘How many?’ you had asked when he confessed his real name one night, his forehead pressing against your sweaty collarbone.

‘Only you’ he had whispered, right before kissing your shoulder “and some Time Lords at the Academy, but they are not important.” you heard him take a deep breath, his nose pressed against your throat “All dead now.”

Those times seemed out of reach. You even asked yourself if he regretted telling you.

“Not you.” he whispered defeatedly, his head falling to his lap “It could never be you.”

“What is it then?”

He shifted his whole body to face you, squirming in his place and unable to keep still. He removed his hand from his pocket, clasping your own tightly.

“It’s me.” he whispered in a choked breath and looked at your eyes “It’s so selfish of me to want you forever even though I know I don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t say that!” you replied, struggling to believe the honesty in his voice and eyes. “You’re not serious. You can’t think like that after everything we’ve been through!”

He focused again on your hands firmly entwined.

“I believe it because… you’re so good” he looked away briefly towards the stars, before turning his gaze back to you again. “And people like me don’t get good people by their side or moments like this.”

The Master stroked your palms with his thumbs, suddenly finding them more interesting than his own thoughts. After a few moments he gave a shaky sigh, backing off once more.

“And if the past few attempts haven’t been proof of that, then I don’t know what could it be.”

“Proof?” you questioned, “Proof of what? And what do you mean by the past few attempts?”

He froze in place, and you frowned at his sudden stiffness. His shoulders tensed and body solid as he sighed deeply, his eyes fluttering closed as he tried and failed to relax his posture. The Master grumbled to himself in defeat, his hand dipping back into his pocket and playing with the TCE or whatever he had found to fiddle with once more.

“I-it’s nothing. Just rambling.” he shrugged in an attempt to consolidate his own thoughts, but not even you believed his body language. “You do it a lot, ramble I mean, ugh, it’s your fault. I’m getting your bad ha-”

“Does it have something to do with the last few stops?” you insisted, although you knew from personal experience that pressuring the Master to talk more than he wanted was never a good idea “All those… extravagant places, the two dates at the Medusa Cascade…”

“Dates?”

You would have laughed at his disgusted look if the atmosphere wasn’t so tense between the both of you. So you just gave him a crooked smile.

“Yes, Master. That’s what it’s called when a person takes another person for dinner to talk and have a good time, especially when the place is that fancy. I loved it even though...”

He watched silently as you told him about the whole date and everything that happened afterwards, despite him being there by your side. Although the dinner had started off with good intentions, it had quickly slipped into a tone of awkwardness through no fault of his own. So much so that the chasing and ‘running for your lives’ had been very much welcomed, although he didn’t notice it. He even apologized once you got into the TARDIS. It was fair to say that he was beyond annoyed the first time.

A month later, when the second date was just another failed attempt in another restaurant in the Medusa Cascade, he had been furious. That was one of the reasons why the console room (or the living room of the house the TARDIS was disguised as) was even messier than usual. He had broken some chairs and cups before following your steps as you had stormed out to the library.

The Master realized as he watched you talk that there would be no such thing as a perfect time. He silently admired the star light reflecting in your eyes and highlighting your features, oblivious to everything else. He couldn’t believe the fact that fate had found a way for both your souls to meet and connect. It didn’t matter in the end how much he had tried to distance himself from any other form of life in the universe, because at the end of the day you had always been there, always. He didn’t believe in fate, but when he looked back at the few possibilities there was for him to meet a person that he truly cared about, it was hard not to succumb at the idea of a force greater than himself pulling the strings to figure everything out.

Even if he dared to think for a split second about not seeing you again, he wouldn’t be able to keep his pieces together. The Master wanted to do the right thing for once, and if fate surprisingly existed, he was certain it absolutely despised him. Countless times he had tried to have a full minute in silence with you, just enjoying each other’s company with a beautiful view, and the same amount of times his plans had been ruined by someone or something trying to either kill him, obtain revenge or obtain revenge via killing him. Until that precise moment he had never had regrets about all the people he had annoyed.

He wondered what he could do now. Kasterborous was the last place on the list, and he was beyond exhausted from trying. On the other hand, he couldn’t give up on you. His best dreams were always about you, but so were his worst nightmares. And whenever and wherever he was he could always be sure about two things: his love for you and his conviction that as long as your heart was beating, so would his.

How had he expected to make it perfect when your lives had always been so messy? After all, that was the whole basis of your lives: chaos, adventure, nothing ever occurring according to plan. And still, everything seemed to always find a way to fall into place. Not even the tardis had felt like a home before you, but now home seemed to be in his hands whenever he held yours, and he would be so lost if your hand ever left his.

A sudden current of hope swallowed him whole.

“Travel the universe with me.” He whispered, loud enough for you to hear.

You couldn’t help but chuckle at his pleading. However, your laugh died with ease when you turned around to find a pair of saddened eyes.

You leaned in and stroked his beard in your palm, using a few seconds to admire his lips and features. Sighing, you repositioned yourself with both of your hands in his lap, your eyes staring intensely at his own as you held his attention on yourself.

“I already travel with you, idiot.” You gave his hands a gentle squeeze, “What’s wrong?”

The Master took three shallow breaths, his sight lost somewhere in your hands above the fabric of his trousers. You moved away from him again, gazing worriedly to how distant he seemed to be from his own flesh. It was at that moment that his hand emerged from the concealment of his thick purple coat pocket, his fist trembling and knuckles a stark white colour.

An idea quickly surged in your brain, and you fought to swallow the dry lump in your throat at the fear of something serious happening to him.

However, that fear quickly vanished when his fist relaxed and his fingers slowly curled open; revealing what was inside for the light of day to see.

For a split second you thought he wasn’t holding anything, but then your mind acknowledged the shape of a ring sitting proudly in front of your incredulous eyes. The ring was so tiny in his large hand that you couldn’t properly see it until his fist was completely open and flat, it seemed almost a crime to keep something so beautiful concealed in the shadows.

The ring was silver, encrusted with white circular gemstones that you didn’t even bother to try and name as without a doubt they weren’t from Earth. The central gem shined a dim light almost invisible until he lent his hand to the side. For a second you could have sworn you had seen a fine black line inside of it, the thought quickly dismissed as a trick of the light as your eyes filled with unstoppable tears once again.

The only thing that could make you look away from the small piece of jewelry was a gentle squeeze to your shoulder, that and the fact that the Master had quickly stowed the ring away in his coat pocket once more. Your trembling body kept your eyes locked on the empty space it had once inhabited regardless, that was until you heard his panicked voice breaking through the loud thumping of your heart in your ears.

The Master had positioned both his hands against your cheeks which were now wet with your tears, his thumb tracing the contour of your cheek and drawing you away from your reverie. Only then did you dare to look at him again.

“I-I’m sorry. I-” he took shallow breaths, blinking away the tears forming in his eyes at light speed. “I’m so sorry. Don’t cry, please. Don’t cry.”

“W-” you tried to ask, but the words in your mouth didn’t seem to appear fast enough in your mind “W-what’s that?”

He leaned in and pressed his forehead to your own, still wiping away the tears that littered your cheeks with his thumbs. Even from that angle you could discern how one tear slipped away from his right eye, licking gently at the hot skin behind only to die in the corner of his lips.

“Nothing.” He stated with a shuddered exhale, suddenly cutting himself off by chewing his lip “It’s nothing!”

“It’s a ring!” You cried in return.

From all the things you expected from the Master, marriage was very low on the list. He despised most planets and sassily commented about any tradition and culture that wasn’t his own. You had never even bothered to think about marriage, especially after knowing that weddings on Gallifrey were mostly arranged, a mere game to obtain political power and status amongst the community. In Gallifrey weddings weren’t enjoyed and at the end of the day, they didn’t mean anything either; it was just a convenient tool for both parties.

But you weren’t a Time Lord.

You were human.

Just one more human traveling the stars.

During your travels, you had learned that the meaning of marriage was a timeless concept to the future of the human race, no matter how long someone had been away from Earth or how many millenniums had passed since the Solar System had been destroyed to dust. Some things simply stayed the same.

So he knew what marriage meant to the human race, and most importantly, he knew what marriage meant to you, for the both of you.

“No” he tried “No, it’s…”

“Don’t lie to me” you growled, pushing his shoulders back “Don’t you dare lie to me. I’m tired of getting pushed away. You always, always, do that. And it hurts”

You buried your head in your knees, your arms wrapping around yourself tightly as tears silently escaped your eyes without remedy. It happened regardless of how you felt, were you happy? nervous? sad? You didn’t even know at this point. The thing with the Master was that he was always so hard to comprehend, despite all the years of traveling and living together. In the end he was always true to his spontaneous, chaotic natures, never failing to surprise you at the least expected moment.

The Master moved closer, this time pressing his forehead to your shoulder. A second after you felt your own shirt getting damp, your heart tightening in your chest even more, if that was even possible. Knowing that not only was he only trying not to cry in front of you, he was also trying to hide, trying to find somewhere safe to let himself break. It was hard not to think about how much exhaustion and courage it was taking him not to get on his feet and run as far as he could.

He always had struggled to put his emotions into words, and expressing the depth of his feelings for you was still something he wasn’t quite used to. Even though he had never said I love you openly, you also knew he didn’t need to.

The Master was the kind of person whose acts always said more than his words. The way he supported you in everything you wanted to do, the soft whispers to wake you up and his habit of making a single cup of coffee in the morning just for you (mostly because he didn’t like the taste). You had spent an endless amount of nights in his arms when you couldn’t sleep, countless days curled up tightly next to him when sickness took over your body. You didn’t remember what nightmares felt like anymore, you hadn’t had one since the first night he shared with you. Yet still, you preferred them to the terror swallowing your body whole when his own nightmares woke you up in the middle of the night.

“Of course it’s a ring.” he finally admitted, “Im selfish enough to not want you with anyone else or anywhere else. I want you here for as long as we have.”

His confession was sealed with a feather light kiss against the exposed skin of your neck. “I’ve been trying to ask you for a long time, but it never works out. I fear this will have to do”

When you pulled away, he quickly wiped all the tears from his face in a rapid and almost angry manner. But even with his cheeks partially dry, you could still see the redness tinted around the edges of his eyes and the tip of his nose, still spot the remnants of tears clinging to his eyelashes.

You pulled his hands away from his face and cleared away the final tears that slipped across his cheeks. A choked sob tearing from his throat as he tried to take a steadying breath. You could clearly see the conflict he waged with himself, especially so when his hands turned into fists and his jaw clenched so tightly you feared he would break a tooth.

Pressing the tip of your thumb against his lip, you caressed the soft skin you were dying to kiss. Looking deeply into his eyes, you could tell he seemed to be finally paying full attention.

“Look at me.”

“I’m looking at you.”

“No, you’re not.” You exclaimed, “You’re thinking, not looking. Stop torturing yourself in that head of yours and just… look at me and see.”

Frown lines marked his face and you took the chance to get rid of the white band-aid that stuck to his forehead; revealing the pristine healed skin underneath.

“What do you want me to see?” The Master ventured after a moment of silence.

“How much I love you.” You brushed the tip of his nose with yours and slid your hand against the soft hairs in his jaw. “You need to see it, and believe…”

His short chuckle was melody to your ears.

“It's impossible not to see it, love.” He smiled sadly, your skin shivering under his touch as he slid two fingers under the fabric of the shirt’s collar. Lazily he outlined your collarbone, his hands roaming and exploring your skin as though it was an uncharted planet.

You smiled to yourself, knowing it was yet again another sign of his nervous quirks; the constant need to entertain his fingers with something.

“It’s there every time I look at you.” The Master continued, “And unfortunately, I never believe what I see.”

Somehow, you already knew what he was going to say, the words nestled deep within your heart. Closing your eyes, you gently pressed your lips against his own, the moment brief and chaste before backing off almost immediately afterwards.

“I’ll have to make you then.”

Leaning forwards your hand reached outwards, pulling the pocket of his coat round as you brazenly dug down into his pocket. It wasn't hard to find the tiny piece of jewelry, but it was definitely harder to free your wrist from the Master’s grip.

“Please…” he begged with pleading eyes “What are you…?”

Eventually, and without a word, he let your wrist go. You licked your lips, feeling the coldness of the ring nestled against your own palm but too afraid to open your fist to give it a proper look.

Taking a deep breath, you finally encouraged yourself to do what had to be done.

Even before giving the ring a second look, you slowly slid the piece of jewellery on to the place it belonged; where it would always belong. Then with baited breath you drew your gaze carefully across every inch of it, committing every shine, every detail to memory. The circular gem in the middle caught your attention for a lot longer than when you had initially seen it, and you found that the more you fixed your eyes on it, the clearer the thin black lines became inside of the gem.

You could tell it was gallifreyan, the entwined circles were hard to mistake for any other language, the black dots inside the circumferences were almost impossible to see. You struggled to find the meaning, even with the knowledge from the classes that The Master had given you in the past.

He seemed to be holding his breath when your eyes watched his features again. Noticing your eyes on him, he swallowed loudly. His whole figure relaxed. His shoulders falling back against the wood-like door, his constant frown fading and hands falling limp in his lap. With nifty fingers brushed away his fringe in an attempt to remove the hair from his eyes.

He was clearly overwhelmed by the situation and you did understand his reaction, after all he had been trying to propose for a long time.

“What does it mean?”

His grin was the biggest he had ever made, his eyes recovering that special shine you hadn’t seen in months.

“Why do I even bother trying to teach you?”

“Why do I even bother treating your wounds if you make me want to punch you in the face afterwards?”

“Uhm… let’s see…” He jokingly teased. Catching your left hand, he brought it closer to his eyes, his gaze fixated on the ring perched on your finger.

With a steady voice and growing confidence, The Master pronounced a series of sounds that you couldn’t quite comprehend, your mind still flaring with recognition for them as the words he always whispered in your hair during the night.

Before you could protest about not speaking gallifreyan, he promptly translated.

“Hold my hand to the ends of the universe.” He took your hand and gently pressed his lips to the ring and the skin around it.

“This is my promise” he finished with a whisper.

Your breath was caught in your throat. You only remembered you needed to say something when he warily gazed to your own incredulous eyes. You had no idea what he would decipher in your gaze, as your own torrent of emotions were hard to decode even by yourself. But you caught sight of the huge amount of hope installed in his eyes and your heart hammered in your chest at the sight.

“Yes, I do.”

The Master chuckled, your attention catching a glimpse of the happiness exploding in his eyes. It was like watching a supernova explode in before you. He let his head fall to your intertwined hands once again, sliding his fingers to tighten his grip around your own as he held your hand.

“I wanted to propose to you.” he smirked, “Not marry you on the spot. We have time for that.”

You chuckled and he lent in, his lips gracing your cheek as he kissed you once more. With his breath hot against your skin, the Master released a shaky, relieved whisper.

“Thank you, love.”

With a gentle touch, his hands wandered to the small of your back urging you to lay down on top of him. You followed his guidance with little resistance, hands pressed against his chest as you could hear the rapid beating of his hearts despite the numerous layers of clothing he always wore.

Excited at the sound, you shifted your hand directly above his hearts, the gemstones in the ring sparkling and reflecting the flickering light of the stars on your finger.

“I love you.” You whispered as his hands traced circular lines in your back. He made an amused sound and kissed the top of your head.

“I love you too,” He answered without a moment's hesitation.

#dhawan!master x reader #the master x reader #master x reader #doctor who #doctor who imagine #doctor who fanfic #doctor who x reader #sacha dhawan #the master #dhawan!master

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sclfmastery · 4 years

Note

When the Master first discovered the truth about the Timeless Child, what do you think his thought process was? What do you think the first thing he did was?

The first thing he thought was, “why am I insufficient to have protected her?” The second, “Why wasn’t i born at the same time as her?” The third, “I’m not her first ANYthing, so how can I have any significance in her life now?”

He then went on a pretty crime-of-passion killing rampage of everyone within the centermost Citadel, obtained control and worked his way out to the grounds just outside it. My headcanon is that he didn’t actually kill most of the general Gallifreyan population, just the Time Council and most of the Time Lords, and the surrounding city. He may have even let some of the kids in the Academy go. I mean, on camera, we only see the capitol burning to the ground. We see no other part of the planet. So when he says he destroyed the whole planet, I’m kinda like, “bitch, where? Receipts please?” I assume he said that because it’s a much more dramatic reveal than “I burned down one particularly awful city.”

His problem was with the people strictly associated with the cruel and hypocritical policies associated with serially abusing a child stolen from another race and civilization entirely.

So he ritually erased the part of his heritage of which he’s ashamed, BOTH because he wants autonomy from the Doctor (and everyone), AND because he loves the Doctor (we all know it, Sacha Dhawan even said so explicitly) and is showing that love the only way he knows how: in revenge and retaliation.

After the passion crime of slaughtering all the Time Lord higher-ups, he started to actually scheme his next move first-degree-murder style. He iced all the bodies and he began his research into a way to further desecrate them: worse than the quick death he gave them, and far more apropos, would be to convert them into another species, one NOT fully contingent on the Doctor’s dna. And since the Daleks were out, because that would take eons of genetic splicing and breeding, what horrible race of monsters could use the original body parts of Time Lords while being something new entirely, and a huge blemish on Time Lord history to boot? Cybermen. After that, he nabbed a TARDIS--I’d like to think, his original one that he left behind during the Time War--used his knowledge of the current Doctor in the Matrix that was stuck in his head--and flew to earth to kill the real O, make first contact with either Eleven or Twelve, and begin the long-con that sucked the Doctor back into his life.

#meta #Anonymous

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myfandomrambles · 4 years

Text

Dhawan!Master Character Analysis

A look at Confused motivations, externalized anger, performance, self-destruction, boredom, and trauma

Confused Motivations:

Something I find interesting is that The Master’s motivations are not understood by himself. He professes it’s because he is angry that The Doctor is a key part of who he is and the “specialness” being The Timeless child gives her, but this is no way the whole story.

A more complete read of the motivations:

A biological concrete aspect has been added to the vacillations of feeling less than and better than The Doctor causing anger.

A compulsive need to control The Doctor and make them the same by putting them on the same “level”

Anger at being even more of a tool and creation of the Time Lords and loss of autonomy & control thereof.

Anger that they hurt The Doctor

Boredom, apathy, impulse control deficits and general control issues informed by trauma.

I doubt he is aware of all of these layers, and I believe The Doctor in the story and us as spectators will choose the one they believe is the “real” reason, but it was never just one. The Master flattens these motivations and explains it to The Doctor as almost all disdain for her, and blind rage, both actively in his emotions, and subconsciously to himself.

We know The Master has been used by the Time Lords their whole life (longer if the child in the flashbacks is Baby!Master) and has their autonomy stripped to be used as a tool of the aristocracy. He is dealing with having the Time Lords who have taken his autonomy directly on a physical level via The Doctor’s DNA. Just like the drums and resurrection during The Time War, we have direct physical meddling by the high council.

The Master has always felt that The Doctor and he are the same, that she is better than him, and that he is better than her in turn. This vacillating perception of her and their dynamic with each other is something we can see tracing through their relationship. This comes into play where they are used as foils and mirrors to each other. The Doctor Pointing this function of being the same while opposed to each other:

Twelve: “He's the only person that I've ever met who's even remotely like me.”

Bill: “So more than anything you want her to be good?

An interesting way we can see this change how they refer to each other sometimes using the present tense and past tense of the word friend.

Ten: “A friend, At first” [Ten spends most of the time focused on them being ‘the last’ over a real relationship, but offer a hand]

Thirteen: “The Master was one of my oldest friends. We went very different ways.” [Thirteen is intensely emotional about the master, more so then we have seen her at almost any other point, but shows mostly anger and exhaustion]

Twelve: “Of course she's not dead. She's a friend of mine. I may have fiddled with your wiring a little bit.” [Both Missy and Twelve focus heavily on their friendship and fall heavily on their intimate history]

The Master also changes the description of their relationship

Missy:“friendship older than your civilization, and infinitely more complex.”

Dhawan!Master: “I'm her best enemy.”

We see how the Fifth Doctor has an almost apathy to The Master, Seven takes the time to give him a proper burial, Ten and Twelve both seek out their respective Masters dreading the loss. The Master also does this being open about wanting attention, playing lower stakes dreams, being truly murderous, and abjectly cruel. The Master's self-perception shits as well; playing god on Gallifrey, making a personal army, putting her on a pedestal, dragging her down, and a suicidal streak. I think this helps illustrate the behaviour throughout the whole season.

The Doctor and The Master compulsively try and get the other’s attention. The obsession is something pointed out by multiple other characters namely; The Brig, Jo Grant, and The Rani. We can see this in him taking the time to play at being O and in how even when he yells about wanting her dead he also always knows she will live why else would he leave a note for her that would show when she got to Gallifrey. The Master will get none of the sought after catharsis and compulsion to involve The Doctor if she actually died. In their Eiffel Tower confrontation;

Doctor: “When does all this stop for you? The games, the betrayals, the killing?”

Master: “Why would it stop? I mean, how else would I get your attention”

His involvement this whole season is only about The Doctor, even the side operations of working with the baddie on earth, committing genocide and paling with the CyberMen are all about The Doctor and his need to exert control over both of their lives.

The Master is angry that The Doctor was hurt. The Master has always had a kind of “Only I can hurt The Doctor” mentality. And considering he knows how it feels to be used and manipulated, I don’t think he wants The Doctor to suffer in that manner by the Time Lords. I don’t think it’s contradictory to want to hurt everyone else and also be angry The Doctor was hurt. Because of the obsessive thoughts around The Doctor, it would alter the thought patterns, The Master is not working based on logic.

A real empathetic connection to The Doctor is present in the way someone who is in a toxic relationship will have. This goes both ways we can see this in the way they have all of these periods of differing extreme emotions, especially if you look at Simm->Missy->Dhawan. There is love there when they had a healthier relationship back when they were friends/crushes, but over time it’s been compromised through each hurting each other (whatever you pick/know of canon this still holds true) becoming toxic for most incarnations. I also don’t think this hot empathy for The Doctor would contradict not even having a cold empathy for the innocents slaughtered on Gallifrey (The at least 2.4 7 billion kids did nothing wrong)

In general, I believe after going fishing in the matrix either on a whim or not the act of burning Gallifrey was likely an impulsive act. But after this, I think planning came into it, along with building the blocks for performance. He can formulate an elaborate game to play with The Doctor, The Matrix, live on earth, and The Cybermen to stave off boredom and attempt to integrate trauma and it will fulfil his rumination on The Doctor and the high council. I’ll talk more about trauma and boredom later.

Externalized & Cyclical Anger:

When you are angry there are generally two ways people display these emotions: they put their pain into their own body and mind or put it on everyone else. Anger is healthy and The Master has every right to be angry at the high Gallifreyans who have treated him and his best friend like garbage from the very start.

Dhawan!Master is a perfect example of someone taking their own pain and putting on everyone else. He is angry at so many things, some justified, some not but is dealing with this through externalization. He displays self-destructive anger but goes about the self-harm/suicidality by causing as much damage outwards as possible. A common Master trait, but very prevalent here, taking his own hurt and making others feel it, a stated goal more than once.

He took this anger at a set number of people onto the entirety of the Gallifreyan people and stepped up the “flirting” and games he plays with The Doctor to one of the most painful versions they have. We can see The Master and The Doctor’s relationships take many different forms of the years but it has always been grounded in the need for the other's attention and anger from The Master at being left. With these added sources of anger they toss at each other it makes sense that we get different versions of tipping point moments when one of them “wins”.

Another key here is that The Master shows a long history of serious anger rage that comes out in extreme ways. He suffers outbursts regularly and it’s something that worsens over time but even The Masters who were more in control we still see how anger is an undercurrent. And while The Doctor has a similar undercurrent The Master has this pattern of explosive outbursts that have slowly become more character-defining.

Part of the cyclical anger is also the fear under there. The Master is afraid of so much, of not being enough, of being left behind, of not being who they thought they were, of dying (historically he has gone to crazy length to live), of continuing to live how he is, of being the worst of him, of being controlled and of the Time Lords. The Master runs from the Time Lords, using them yes, but never staying there.

The Timeless Child revelation might have acted as a trigger for larger displays of anger, however, I think it’s key to The Master that this anger was there way before now. And it has caused mass suffering before now, this sympathetic grief and anger The Master shows in Timeless Children is compelling but it’s best understood a part of a cycle of outbursts of those emotions severely worsened by this latest re-traumatization.

Performance:

The Master, like The Doctor, is a huge fan of performance art. This is something that has always been there with costumes, voice changes, dancing, and using this for both just plain fun and as a real tool. On a strictly meta-level, Sacha Dhawan was living for every moment and being able to meet and even surpass Whittaker for screen presence. It was his story almost anytime he was on screen.

Narratively putting on a show was key, as O he is literally playing a part for The Doctor, and even keeping in contact as this persona. When in the past he is theatrical in his introduction in the science expo, in his character reveal in Ascension of the Cybermen his dialogue starts is:

Master: “Wow! Oh! Ah! That's a good entrance, right? Be afraid, Doctor. Because everything is about to change... forever.”

He literally asks if they liked his entrance, they liked how he presented himself. Then follows this up with this big pronouncement. Begging for the people on screen and us to pay attention to him. Which is generally one of the only moments in this episode that people really remember from the latter 1/2 of the episode.

The entirety of the interactions with The Doctor on Gallifrey has a semi-planned performative aspect like he has a bit of script in his head and is using the environment as a stage, monologuing for the vast majority of the time. He critiques the performance as much as the substance of the Lone Cyberman’s plan. The body language and mannerisms are also very large and have a dancing aspect to it, or come across as severe and are trying to get a rise out of The Doctor or Cyberium.

Another aspect to the performance is how he has these set pieces, of bringing her in, then trapping her, playing with the Death Particle and more than anything is the CyberMasters. He introduces them with a big speech, does the march with them and uses them to make a point more than to actually build an army. It’s also important to think he had to make the costumes and had this macabre point of putting the Time Lords into the Cyber Armour.

The performance is more than anything just begging for attention. The Master loves to blow stuff up, watch the smoke of buildings, and fight with The Doctor, but it’s clear that they tried really hard to impact The Doctor more than anyone else. It’s clawing to be enough for The Doctor, prove himself, to win. Another way this performance is as a mask covering the fact The Master is falling apart. It's the duality of The Master always loved putting on the show but there is desperation undergirding it. We can see how The Master can start to jump in his speech mannerisms become more desperate and this facade of control drips to the anger and fear consuming him.

By putting on a show, he is in control. He fears to be out of control, and the loss of identity both the Time War and the Timeless Children gave him. Controlling how he acts, how others view him and setting out a roadmap. Control through hurting others, hurting himself, through acting and of course just basic controlling others.

Self-Destruction:

The Master is highly self-destructive here, something that is connected to a form of “anger in” and the aspects of control we talked about before. When the death particle fails to go off the first time he seems somewhat disappointed it didn’t just end right then:

Dhawan!Master: “Worried, were you? I thought if he was compressed, the Death Particle would activate and all this would be over. I would've been okay with that. I thought it was a nice little gamble. But no, here we are, all still alive.”

He is gambling with his life, I believe this to him would be a second-best ending to finishing the whole game and be face-to-face with The Doctor. More than anything though, it seems he wants to be able to end everything with The Doctor there as well. In this case that is the ultimate control he is seeking, to end the fear, grief, bitterness and pain. Suicidal thoughts don’t quite care if you complete your plan.

The ultimate version of this plan puts The Doctor in the position of if she wants to save the world she must also join The Master in an act of extreme destruction. The interesting thing is it fails to put The Doctor on his level because instead of an act of anger, control and wanting harm this one is to prevent more death. If she had been able to do it it would have succeeded in making her die as a hero which is the opposite of the stated goal. The Doctor has taken cruel and pointlessly destructive steps before but this wouldn’t have been one of them. The Doctor has also been suicidal before this point, those moments would have been a lot closer to them being the same then this actions as well.

Outside of the moral quandary, this is actually not that different from a murder-suicide in real life on a psychological level. Murder-suicide is also incidentally a highly male crime, which adds to an interesting pattern of invoking male violence. The Master wants to end his life but if this was the only goal he could have done it a million and one ways and send a note to The Doctor if he just wished her to know. But, like in real life part of it is wanting to control the other person too, he wants to control The Doctor and himself. The Master here has had his self-belief shattered, is depressed himself and feels The Doctor has become something less manageable with all this new information along with Thirteen being one of the least interested in The Master's games. This is interesting as I said before Dhawan!Master is the king of externalizing violence so even when his self-loathing drives him to suicidal urges the need to have The Doctor die with him and end anything that could possibly live on Gallifrey takes precedent.

I think this is key because, for all the talk for pointing out that he is really suicidal, the murder-suicide aspect is really key to any honest reading of the situation. Because if the death particle plan had worked he would have just committed murder-suicide, even with The Doctor pulling the triggering. This act would have come after a psychological battering via The Matrix (which even if he has a real want for her to know it was done cruelly), threats to her friends, threats of mass violence, giving her the weapon it’s hard to say he wasn’t culpable in the death particle’s usage. Even the first plan would have killed her too.

He is insistent that he broke her, she has nothing left, her world view is broken he finally brought her down. He needs The Doctor to be in the same headspace as he abjectly lost and searching for something worth living for. To feel understood and to be in control. Personally, I don’t think she has just accepted that none of this hurts and she is great because he gave her “gift of myself” and proved she “contain multitudes”, it feels more like her not wanting to give in to his control, to convince herself, but in the end, it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t win this time, and worse he dies without her. And interestingly she ends up taking the cowards route by making someone else fight her battle, this had nothing to do with ending the Cyber War it was ending a toxic relationship, a demolished culture and a Time War.

Boredom:

Something I think I've not seen talked about a lot is that if The Master is displaying a show of chronic boredom this is something associated with a lot of people who are violent towards others and themselves. I think we can see this in his agitation, body language, speech patterns and just the sheer amount of what he accomplished during The Timeless Children. This is less visible in him being O as we don’t really know how much he was messing around or doing while in character, but the moment he stops the endless need to do something, anything shows up.

If you think about it not everything he did is strictly necessary for the goals of destroying Gallifrey and then commit murder-suicide with The Doctor. But along with the need for a show, there is always something to do. And when each aspect of the plan finishes there is some joking and revealing but it also feels like “whoop that's done I'm bored again”.

He’s compulsively doing something, anything, but as he mentions this isn't actually fully fixing anything. It’s something that really lends itself to both the outward and inward destruction. When nothing will ever calm the anger, nothing will help you regulate, no amount of stimulus can keep your attention, it leads to reckless and damaging behaviour.

However, the game with The Doctor has to end, because this is the long game and now that we’re here she has to finish it too. The Doctor also has chronic boredom and he knows this, and that The Doctor has as little self-preservation as him. It tracks that when he makes the finale move he would assume The Doctor would be willing to act out too.

Trauma:

I think it’s very clear this Master is dealing with trauma and we see a lot of signs, many of which I talked about but here is a list:

Agitation

Anger & rage

Chronic Boredom

Compromised empathy

Compulsive behaviour

Depression

Destructive behaviours & suicidal actions

Dysregulated emotions

Enmeshment with The Doctor

Identity issues

Lashing out

Locus of control issues (Blaming everyone else while also needing to own it)

A need for control

Oscillating self-estimation

Preoccupation with those who traumatized them (with the timelords & The Doctor)

Reenacting trauma

Ruminating thoughts

Sensory integration issues (stimming, could be linked to other conditions)

Trying to put on a show, (A trait associated with trauma linked PDS)

Thoughts of violence

Dysregulation of Emotions and Nervous System: The erratic emotions displayed by The Master overlaid with behaviours that some have identified as looking like stimming point to dysregulation. His feelings and affect jump around and are always at high levels. A point of interest, however, is that From Spyfall to Timeless Children the issue seems to worsen as the ability to put up a facade is gone. Now we know that it wasn’t really that long of a period where he was actively keeping it as we only saw him as O for a short time. But it tracks that after being exiled on earth and then into the Kassavian dimension his dysregulation would worsen.

Preoccupation With Those who Traumatized Him: It’s so heavy in this story and even throughout the whole story The Master is locked on those who have hurt him, and the trauma thereof. The Master is used as a tool here the same way people manipulate The Doctor via their god and guilt complexes. The entire story is the Master having gone back to Gallifrey to try and enter the Matrix and then spend the whole time destroying Gallifrey and even then he can’t leave. New Who Masters specifically have their whole stories centred around the trauma Gallifrey did to them and their connection with The Doctor was changed by that event. And Dhawan!Master takes no action in this series that doesn’t involve this, even the plan with Kassavian is centred on getting the Doctor’s attention and setting up sending her to Galifrey.

Replaying Trauma: This is a commonality between the master and The Doctor. They have been reliving the Time War, the same patterns of loss of their friends, being unable to turn off the training to be a soldier. The Doctor is often taking the same actions she did before, sometimes outside of her control, all of which were made during a trauma state or resulted in traumatic experiences.

The Master replays the behaviours he learned during trauma as The Doctor does, but is a lot more likely to not only replay acts that they did that traumatized others, which The Doctor does too but also can replay what those who traumatized them did.

The speeches we get from the master in Timeless Children is slightly off version of Rassilon's speech at The End of Time pt 1.

Master: “Yes, it could! Behold your new CyberMasters, Doctor. All born from you, but led by me. How does that feel? Huh? Now, no time to lose. Don't move. Oh, that's right, you can't. Can you feel a new era dawning, Doctor? For Gallifrey.”

Cybermen: “For Gallifrey!”

Master: “For the Time Lords.”

Cybermen: “For the Time Lords!”

Master: “For the end of the universe itself!”

Cybermen: “For the end of the universe itself!”

Master: “Sweet dreams. This way, soldiers.”

Time Lords: “For Gallifrey!”

Rassilon: “For victory!”

Time Lords: “For victory!”

Rassilon: “For the end of time itself!”

Time Lords: “For the end of time itself!”

The Master who destroyed Galifrey in the name of something Tecteun, and by extension the other founding fathers of Galifrey, is playing the same game Rassilon did and views himself as a god of Time Lords the same way Rasilon did. We also know The Master isn’t directly quoting them because he was not present when Rasilon made that speech, so this dialogue shows how he is in patterns of trauma. It also is important character and theme-wise because it plays on the ideas of autonomy and how the Master has essentially made himself the destruction and death god to Gaalifry in the way The Doctor was essential in its creation. While he is goading The Doctor to be both creator and destroyer. The Master and The Doctor are in fact these forces, even though I believe the Timeless Child is a victim of abuse and exploitation, but, it’s entirely true that The Doctor and The Master are playing at being gods. Something they have done on other planets before.

This is also part of replaying trauma in the fact he has taken bodily autonomy and specifically regeneration from Time Lords to use as his own weapons. The CyberMasters are exactly what the worst version of Timeless Children are, complete manipulated weapons with no free will.

Conclusion:

The story of Dhawan!Master is one that turned hard into both the idea of The Master being in pain themselves but also showing some of the worst cruelty the master has ever done in both their extreme assault of The Doctor and genocide.

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clockworkouroboros · 5 years

Text

This amazing art by @ouidamforeman inspired me. I need to go to bed, instead I’m writing stupid short fanfic about Narvin and Romana looking for their wife.

———

“I refuse to wear that.”

Romana hangs up the shirt with a huff, doing her best to not use her presidential voice on Narvin. Instead, she sighs. “Need I remind you, Narvin, that even if it seems nonsensical, you need to wear something not quite so… Gallifreyan?”

Oh dear. Her voice sounds just a bit too wearily imperious to pass as annoyed. Funny how the presidential voice stuck with her after all these years. She hasn’t actually been president in centuries.

Currently she and Narvin are in an old TARDIS—their TARDIS, she supposes. Its internal layout keeps reconfiguring itself. Apparently it can’t reconcile her tastes with Narvin’s. Which is fair enough, she thinks, as she looks over the rack of clothes that she found somewhere in the depths of the Ship. The only thing she and Narvin really have in common is a fondness for Leela.

Although, of course, they care very much for each other. But their upbringings were so different, and it took an actual civil war for Narvin to even ally himself with her. Now they’re friends. More than friends, really. It’s amazing how near-death experiences bring people closer together.

“Why do I have to wear these things again?” Narvin asks her, gesturing at his trousers. He’s much better at sounding annoyed than she is. “What are they called again?”

“Trousers,” she supplies tiredly. She looks him up and down, and he blushes, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “They’re practical for what we need to be doing. And anyway, most humanoid life forms wear something similar. It will help you blend in.”

“And what if I don’t want to blend in?” Narvin asks. He probably thinks he sounds rebellious and cool, but this is Narvin. He can’t do any emotions other than annoyed bureaucrat.

Romana fixes him with a hard stare. “Time Lords are not going to be the most popular people in the universe, I can guarantee it. Not with Rassilon and Mantus running around like that.” She looks him up and down again, staring at him like she’s never seen him before in her life. “You look… younger.”

“The… thing that I told you about,” Narvin mutters. “I think it gave back some of my regenerations. It also rejuvenated the current one. At least, I think it did.”

“Or maybe being on Gallifrey was slowly killing you,” Romana suggests. “I wouldn’t blame you, not the way things are going.” She ignores his death glare. “Now. We need to find you a shirt.”

“And I already said I’m not going to wear that—that thing—that you showed me!” Narvin says. If Romana was the type of person to not be overly-concerned about her wardrobe, she would laugh at how concerned Narvin is about his. But she understands fashion. She knows how important it is to have the right outfit.

“That was a perfectly good shirt,” she insists.

Narvin gives a short sigh. “I’ll grant you that,” he admits. “But I’ve never looked good in Gallifreyan day wear.”

“Oh, is that why you only wear your CIA robes?”

He gives an embarrassed cough. “I thought you said my clothes needed to be practical.” He rubs his exposed arms, like he’s cold, but Romana is fairly certain that he’s just thoroughly embarrassed. And Romana can understand it. She and Narvin love each other, but he’s the kind of Time Lord who would get embarrassed over going shirtless in front of his spouse.

So, a normal Time Lord.

She leaves him to find a shirt on his own, heading back to the console room to see where they’ve landed. On the way, she grabs a big sun hat. It goes ever so nicely with the new outfit she’s put together.

—————

The planet is very sunny. Romana refused to let Narvin look at anything, so he knows nothing about where they are, or what the wildlife is like, or if it’s inhabited, or if the air is safe, or-

He knows Romana’s probably checked, but it’s in his nature to octuple-check these things.

So far, all he can tell about the planet is that it’s sunny. He’s walking in some sort of tall, golden grass. Romana’s just behind him. She’s wearing a giant hat that shades her from the hot sun.

Narvin can feel his cells reacting to the sunlight. He puts a little extra effort into making sure he doesn’t get a sunburn, and wonders briefly if he should let the sun tan his skin. Would Leela like him with a tan? He scratches his beard distractedly, then remembers that it doesn’t matter what Leela likes unless he and Romana find her. And there’s a possibility that she’s on this planet.

He shades his eyes with his hand, wishing that he could be wearing Romana’s big hat. Maybe Leela will be there, off in the distance.

And then a fireball from the sky shoots down, where he and Romana had just been walking and what was that from oh sweet Rassilon—wait Rassilon was actually evil—oh sweet Omega—no, he’d been bad too—oh sweet other.

Romana puts her hands to her hat to keep it from flying off as the hot air from the blast hits them. “I wonder what that is!” she calls to Narvin. She sounds rather more excited than Narvin feels is healthy.

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” he replies. His gaze slides back and forth between Romana and the now-smoldering fireball a little ways behind her. It clearly was some kind of spaceship. “It could be anything. Daleks, Time Lords, some other hostile alien force. It could be a sabotage from a terrorist group on this planet, and we’ll end up being blamed for it.”

“It could be Leela,” Romana says, interrupting him. “And that means we’re going to look.

Narvin looks from the wreckage to Romana, then back to the wreckage, mentally doing an extensive cost-benefit analysis in which the costs involve all manner of unpleasantness, and the only benefit is the chance of finding Leela.

He sighs and, with a look of utmost displeasure and disgust, follows Romana to the wrecked ship.

#gallifrey audios #emily writes #fanfic #romana #narvin #leela #just a warning: this was written in approximately ten minutes #and i’ve done nothing to correct any mistakes #because i’m tired and also lazy

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ouidamforeman · 6 years

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Underrated Gallifrey things

When Leela tells Torvald she’s gonna dangle his entrails in front of his dying eyes and he just goes “That’s...really horrible” in mildly surprised disgust

Romana’s pre-recorded “calm down” speeches in Square One, especially the one that was obviously written to be played when Narvin inevitably started a fight

The fact that Romana and Brax had clearly sat down together to plan the initial events of Square One out. I imagine them laughing their asses off at forcing Narvin to be a diplomat and then Romana going “God I’m a bitch” after deciding Leela was going to be his personally chosen exotic dancer.

K9 saying “spellbound intimacy”

“It must be a blessed relief having a Time Lord after you, they do only like to watch,” which imo is one of the best lines in the series

K9 has apparently been trained in dance instruction

“You should not be afraid of your feelings, K9.”

That chaotic period after the Civil War when everyone is arguing about and forgetting each other’s titles while the planet is literally about to be invaded and Narvin is there in the background just exasperatedly threatening to shoot people

When Romana and Brax are talking about avoiding “Gallifreyan grandstanding” in Square One and Romana’s next scene is her loudly and dramatically announcing “FAREWELL! I MUST LEAVE YOU NOW!” to a room full of other heads of state

That time Romana was almost assasinated with a magic necklace

That time the alternate Narvin pretended he and Romana were married and Romana tried to play along

Narvin being horrifically wounded and dying from blood loss but still managing to complain about Romana and Leela every time he’s lucid

Lady Trey flirting with Narvin, Leela, and her previous self in back-to-back scenes

Ace calling Narvin “Narv” and him being genuinely outraged by this

In series 4 when Leela is the first person to decide Narvin is their friend now and Romana is like “Ahhaha yeah okay”

Narvin being obviously completely freaked out throughout all of Annihilation

That scene in Enemy Lines where Narvin can’t speak in full sentences for a while so he just sputters several incomplete lines of dialogue while his friends watch him suffer

Narvin being called a forest sprite

Romana’s “Commander Cretin” line in A Blind Eye

Narvin: “Be careful you’ll break it!” Romana: “I’ll break you in a minute.”

“Madam, the Alps are in the other direction”

Series one Brax just being mildly delighted by everything like some kind of amoral fae

The time Narvin spent an entire episode doing nothing but being sleep deprived and talking shit

Valyes: “Narvin! It’s you! I thought you were an alien come to kill me.” Narvin: “Understandable sir we all have days like that”

I know we mention it a lot but I still feel like the series 3 five year mid-sentence cliffhanger leading into the absurd series 4 shippy fanfic-tier daydream sequence isn’t talked about enough. Like this is a thing that actually happened and I think about that daily.

#add your own #underrated gallifrey things #gallifrey audios

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sparklingrainbowdragon · 5 years

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The main Defenders as Troubled Birds quotes

One (recognizable by speaking only in lowercase letters):

Pronoun: she

Despite having lived to an age of 100 years, One has remained a child in the Defender's mind. She chose the title Defender as a promise to always protect her home and family. Pure, caring, unbroken and untouched by killing and the own deaths.

Five (recognizable by a light stutter):

Pronoun: she

The fourth Defender regenerated due to a weapon that vaporized every living thing around it. With the body completely destroyed, the regeneration energy was enough to create head, torso and left arm anew. The other limbs were missing or not fully developed. Her eyesight was bad and she was always speaking with a stutter. Due to her condition, she was not placed in battles, but she proved to have a stunning understanding of machines and a talent for construction which makes her the tinkerer amongst the Defenders. Besides the weapons and gadget for military, she was also constantly working on her own mechanic prosthesis'.

Nine (recognizable by cREepY WrItINg):

Pronoun: it

Nine spent a whole lifetime being tortured and experimented on at the hands of the Daleks until it became a twisted, broken creature who perished hoping that whoever came after it, would be able to get free.

Ten (recognizable by speaking in a Southern kind of accent)

Pronoun: he

He is still driven by Nine's insanity and rage and spent a lot of time in a brutal bloodcraze. The vow to protect became blindly following every order from the Gallifreyan War Council and actually enjoying it. The reward for for his actions became the act of killing itself. He sharpened his teeth and tattooed the names of people, planets and civilizations that had been extinct by him into his skin with regeneration-permanent ink. Cruel and uncaring about anything but his own survival.

Eleven (he was here first, his speech is as normal as they come):

Pronoun: he

We got to know him first and best and now he has to deal with all that mess inside his head. Poor boi.

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marrowskies · 6 years

Text

janeturenne

replied to your post

“art/word requests?”

I mean. It probably goes without saying that I want to request all the Gallifrey things in the world, in both fic and art form. Leela/Narvin, maybe? How about: Leela sends something to Narv, a note or a gift of some kind, and he (or she, if you’re feeling fem!Narv-ish) has a moment of blushing and OH NO FEELINGS THIS IS CUTE MAKE IT STOP. Y/N/Maybe?

a/n: hey so like I haven’t listened past s5 and I made up that Narvin broke his stazer at one point. maybe he’s actually done this. maybe birthdays are things that have been mentioned. this is all possible and nothing i could account for being that I only listened up to s5 and broke up with mainline Doctor Who about five years ago and haven’t listened to s1-5 in quiteeeeeeeee a whillllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee also i wrote this in a day and I haven’t written a fic in QQUIIIITEEEEE A WHIIII anyway i guess what i’m saying is i’m sorry jane ok

Of the list of ideals and morals that Narvin fell back on in times of crisis and doubt, that constituted a core of his being, he liked to think that Simplicity was at the top of it, perhaps in a reasonable orbit around Practicality. It was the way he liked to live his life, with simple and practical robes, simple and practical bodies, simple and practical weapons. It might have started during his time as a technician, where such habits were encouraged, but even after moving on into proper Celestial Intervening, excess had started to make him feel claustrophobic, constantly perceiving peas under mattresses he couldn’t smooth. The opulence of the Capitol often put him at odds with his duties. Worthless beauty. Design for the appearance of having design.

“Narvin.”

“Leela.”

“I will make you accept this gift. You are only making me have to decide whether I must use my words or my strength.”

Back when she was only a Savage, he didn’t think her very simple.

Well, there was simple and then there was simple. She was obviously the latter. The textures of her leathers were varied and cobbled together, and though the stitching was as even as humanly possible, it was no machine grade. (He’d hated seeing them, all minutely irregular, imitating perfection they couldn’t achieve. He still somewhat itched to redo them.) She spoke twice to three times as many words to capture her meanings, and though they were relatively simple words, they were flowery with little purpose. In fairness, most politicians overstuffed their speeches into inscrutability and this Narvin was used to, but at least they did it with the intention. And if she did not speak, she waved around a blade, an impractical weapon with excessive residue and a high probability of failure. Nothing like a clean couple of stazer shots through both hearts. And yet, despite the visual color and dichotomy of her being, it appeared only to coat an empty shell full of stupid instincts and guttural thoughts. So she was simple. But she was simple without elegance.

It felt bizarre to recall those opinions as old memories. There were still ghosts of them when he looked at her, echoes of how they’d burned his chest and churned his thoughts, gritting his teeth and crowding his skull with anger and betrayal at a human on this planet with him, a savage in the halls of the Citadel standing next to him, in the rooms of the President, upright at his side and as his equal…

Yet now, here he was, someone ready to defend against anyone who repeated his old arguments. To defend simplicity of make against simplicity of design. To defend a sharp edge and instincts against millennia of technological advancements and learned calculations. To defend the use of twenty small words to evoke a single, complicated emotion.

Yes, here he was, not in the mood to accept gifts for a pointless non-holiday that she was the only person insisting on this planet that he should get anything for.

“Leela, I have already told you this - repeatedly, and a few spans ago - that we don’t celebrate birthdays. And it’s not even my birthday.”

She pursed her lips at him. “At the core of such celebrations is to appreciate life as it was given to you. That that day is the reason you are here now. It does not matter if today is that specific day.” She thrust the box into his hands.

Impressed, “Eloquent argument. But I still don’t take gifts.” He pushed it back.

She was losing her patience, her jaw squaring as her teeth set themselves. “Narvin,” she snapped, “do not think that gift giving is merely about you! I am attempting to be kind. We have endured much together, and I consider you my friend. You said that you Gallifreyans do not celebrate your days of birth, and if you truly do not care for it, it is simply a day and shall be over soon. A day that I am trying to be grateful for, despite such foolish arguments. Take. My gift.“ The box re-entered his hands. “Or I shall regret this, and if I do, I will make you regret it too.”

Good old fashioned threats. How could he not accept?

He took the box.

He stood there, staring down at it.

“Are you not going to open it?”

He winced. “Do I have t-”

“Yes.”

With a long-enduring sigh, he put his hand on the lid. “It’s not a pig-rat corpse, is it? Not that I don’t appreciate the thought, but there’s better food to be had-”

“Narvin! Open the box!”

He opened the box.

When she had stopped being the Savage to him, he never told her.

He wasn’t exactly sure when it happened, after all. One day, he despised sharing clean, opulent, Gallifreyan existence with the Savage, and then, during a civil war that constantly pressed questions of loyalty, in the squalor of righteous revolution, she had become Leela. At some point he’d realized a kinship in their appreciation for the more simple things in life that allowed a comfort he never felt around most Gallifreyans with their layers of robes, a thousand gilded edges, and hours of traditional droning. Still, he was relatively sure it was something about her blade that had really done it. As stazers became rarer to come by, their limited military forces less trained in precision aiming, there was something simple and practical about a sharp edge held between two pieces of wood to protect the fingers, leather wrapped around for the grip, and two quick motions to render an enemy dead. Motions that everyone knew, and that any fool could learn. As the war began to stretch longer and longer, and the supplies began to get thinner, he found himself admiring it more and more.

“A savage weapon for a savage,” she’d said, once.

“No,” he’d replied suddenly, in a moment of revelation. The first, but not the last time he’d defend her. “A simple weapon with a thousand purposes. Never runs out of charges. What could be less savage than that?” He remembered staring at his broken stazer, its once smooth exterior cracked open to reveal its microchips and generators. A complicated weapon with a single purpose, broken to pieces in a battle. And with only a few charges left, anyway. Instead, a simple and practical weapon, held in the hand of a simple and practical woman, had saved his life.

Several times.

“Leela, I-…”

The blade, pristine and new, seemed to suck in light from its surroundings and reflect it back two-fold. He blinked, momentarily dazzled by the beam and by his chest. A plain double edged blade, a carefully carved but unadorned handle, a required slice of metal for the hilt.

Simplicity. Practicality. Defined in a single object.

He tried again. “Leela, I-…,” but he couldn’t speak.

“It is made from one of your old weapons. I asked one of the people in the Capitol to melt it down for me - they thought I was being foolish!”

One of his old stazers. Thrown into a pile to be recycled and remade. Thousands of years of design, engineering, and craft, melted down into hunk of sharp metal. Arguably a waste. Absolutely a waste, he would have once insisted.

“I know you do not like your items ornate, and I was not much of a carver when I was with my people. But look how I make a fine blade! See how it gleams! The light itself could pierce a mouse! I think it is some of my best work.”

He couldn’t speak.

Leela quieted for a short while. Then, disappointedly, (perhaps a little distraught?)

“You do not like it.”

He couldn’t speak.

A sigh. “It is alright, Narvin. Though you cannot appreciate it, as I thought you might not, it is still a magnificent blade. I will find a use-…”

He grabbed her arm before she could take the box back entirely. In her moment of confusion, he picked up the knife and slipped it in its sheath.

Gently, “Narvin, you do not have to take it just because-…”

He slid the sheath smoothly onto his belt, next to his stazer. A complicated weapon with a simple use, a simple weapon with a thousand uses. He shook his head and tried again. “No, Leela, I… You don’t know how much this… This is…” His face began to heat in frustration, a bizarre sensation when not accompanied by its usual undercurrent of anger.

A realization finally bloomed on Leela’s face and she laughed. “I have taken your words! I have won many victories in my life, but I shall treasure this one, Narvin! The savage steals the voice of a Time Lord with but a gift!”

At this he’s able to scoff and roll his eyes. “Hardly. As I’ve said, birthdays are not a tradition around here. You can’t blame me for not having a proper reaction to-…”

“And with the same generosity, she has restored him!”

She laughed for a time at this and at him, and he decided to let her; his simple gesture of gratitude.

#janeturenne #gallifrey audios #look i'm really sorry about how read mores don't work in the app everyone #alice does writing

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dwsecretsanta · 6 years

Text

The Shadows In The Eve Part 1

So, this is the first part of my SS-gift this year, for @presidentromana.

Canon-divergence, Dark-fic, Romana/Leela, Narvin, (eventual) Pandora and Brax in later parts. Hope you like it!

Rating: FR13, for dark themes and a spot of amputation.

Summery: Trapped in the Adacemy, things begin to go wrong, and Romana decided to end the Civil War the fastest way that she can think of.

Wordcount:2,889

The Shadows In The Eve

Sounds.

Footsteps on the floor, making a quickly-muted brief echo, sharp and narrow. We’re in a corridor, I can tell this by the bounce of the echo, and the smell of the walls around me. Narrow, and long. One of the outer ones, the feeling of the sunlight on my skin, coming through the few windows around the place gives this away.

My steps are short and low, yet confident. Searching for obstacles on the floor, that I once would have hopped over without a second thought. Now, I need to know that they are there, and how far they stretch, before I can hop over them. All little things that I can tell, through hearing, and sense of perception and depth.

The floor has its own smell as well, which varies when the depth changes. It’s faint, but it is there, and now that my eyes see only darkness, my nose is sensitive enough to smell it.

A finger, drawing along the wall, only the tip, and no nail.

“So much dust.”

Romana’s voice is soft, the words meant for my ears alone. I raise a foot to step over a chunk of fallen rubble, following the pattern of her footsteps from memory. I refuse to be guided by a hand, as though I’m nothing more than a helpless child once again. This is my world now, and I will walk it as well as any other.

“Of course there is dust, Romana.” My voice holds sympathy for those that have gone before, but my words are what the Doctor would have called ‘matter-of-fact.’ These are the facts of the matter, and there is nothing that any of us can do, to change them. “This place, it belongs to the dead now, as surely as the boneyard under the Hoarder’s nest. That is why it makes such a good hiding place for us. Few people ever look for the living where the dead lie.”

Another sound, the slight rasp of a hinge, as a door is thrown open ahead of me, just before a dead end. I know that it is there, the solidness of the wall impenetrable to sound, bouncing back the echo of the way that I move, the little noises that I make, which others don’t seem to pick up on.

The Doctor told me about something called echolokon, once, seeing the world with nothing but sound. Sometimes I almost believe that I can do this, tracing the world around me in a web of silver. My ears are not sharp enough yet though, I know this. Or I have not spent long enough in the darkness.

Old bone. Fresh air. Musty wood. A breeze on my skin. There is no dust here; it’s all been swept away by the wind.

“This place is open to the elements.”

Another person might wonder how I know that.

“A broken ceiling,” Romana offers by way of explanation. “Looks like it was a shock wave, from an electro-bomb, if the scorch marks are anything to go by.”

I do not know what an elektro-bomb is, but I can guess. I inhale again, doing what I can to get the measure of the room that we are in. I do not need to be able to see a place in order to defend it.

“So, that is the charge that I can smell in the air, still. This place reeks with it, and it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight, as though there is a predator behind me, waiting in the shadows.”

The sound of shifting, and with that I can clearly picture Romana glancing back over her shoulder, and around herself, to check for any danger that might be around us. If there had been anything there I would have heard it by now, of course.

“This place was so beautiful, once,” Romana’s voice is gentle, her words tinged with the colours of a tainted memory. “I was never exactly happy here, and I didn’t have any friends, but I could always find peace here.”

Cloth shifting, the warmth of another living being coming close. A hand, wrapping around mine. I can feel what this war is taking from Romana, in the dryness of her skin, and the cracks in her nails. I know that there are times when she goes without eating, for the sake of those that stand with her.

For the briefest of moments, I resist. But this is not someone guiding my path. This is simply a friend trying to share something with me.

Two steps forward. A table. The wood is dry, the smell sharp, bordering on rot. My hand is guided under it, fingers curved up, to brush over the wood on the underside. There is better protection from the elements here, and I can feel a pattern of indents, the fine, circular pattern of Gallifreyan, which Rodan started to teach me how to read, when Andred was busy with his duties with the Chancellery Guard.

My lips move, as I try to puzzle out the unfamiliar letters, sight unseen, but such a thing is beyond me.

Simply another thing that I’ve lost.

“The writing, here. Is this why we have come here? What does it say, Romana? Is it important?”

A soft clearing of a throat.

“My name. Or, at least the one that I went by, when I was here. This was my room, once. And now, it has been destroyed, my memories desecrated, and I can’t do anything to make it into what it used to be! It’s damaged, just like everything else I ever treasured in this life, and it makes me feel so powerless.”

I hear the words under the words, as clearly as though they have been said, instead. “You think that I am damaged?” My voice, in reply, takes on a sharper note than before, bordering on defensive. “You can call it what you will, but I think I am stronger than I have ever been. The loss of my sight has improved my other senses, and now there is no distraction from what must be done.”

Romana’s hand tightens on mine for a moment, then, as she lets out a breath, I feel the tightness ease. “You sound so sure of yourself, Leela.”

“That is because I am, Romana. In a war, there is no room for guilt and self-doubt. These things will only paralyse you, when you are tested, and weaken you when you cannot afford it.”

More sounds, footsteps on the floor moving away from me, the snapping of material as it’s shaken in the air the way that my father used to clean old skins, sneezing and a sudden envelopment of dust. Then the footsteps travel away again, for a moment, towards the area where the scent of old death lies.

I have seen this action before, so it is not hard to see it again, now.

“You are covering the bones of the dead.” It’s not a question.

I follow the sound of Romana’s heartsbeat and breath, back to her side once again, and my hand finds her shoulder, resting on it. The bone underneath the skin is sharp and hard, another testament to how hard the times are on us all.

“Tell me, Leela. What do I do? No matter what way I turn, I feel like I’m being driven deeper and deeper into a trap.”

“You know what you must do, Romana. You must end the war, at any cost.”

Why should I avoid the facts, when I have been asked a question, and it is only the two of us that stand here in this empty room, watched by empty eyes and an empty sky?

Then it happened. The charge that was making my skin prickle and my hair stand broke like a storm opening up from the skies overhead. It wasn’t rain that fell, though. It was silence and emptiness, draining away the sense of everything else from the outside, falling into the empty spaces and building there, like giant sheets of glittering ice-crystal.

Romana’s hearts were racing, her breath sped. The acrid smell of fear leaked from her, and the faintest trace of salt tear, another instinct of panic.

“Romana, tell me. What has happened? What is going on?” I reach out with my voice, offering a thread for her to reel herself back in on, but there is no response, and no change to what I can hear.

She has not heard me, which leaves me with only one option, because I need her to be herself, strong and quick and clever. I have never encountered this before, and so I cannot paint it in my minds eye.

A slight tilt of my head gauging the sounds of her breath and the height and angle of her head, then a flick of my hand, which is met by smooth resistance and spreads a stinging warmth across the skin. The sharp sound of a crack echoes through the room.

Her breathing takes on a more steady, controlled rhythm and I know that it has worked.

“Did you just slap me?” Romana’s tone is both affronted and angry. I know anger well; it is an easier emotion to hang onto, than facing up to that which is really frightening you. However, I have faced things that are scarier than Romana’s anger, over the years.

“Yes, I did. The Doctor said that it was good for shock and I know that something is wrong, even though I do not know what. You need to be rational for us both, now. Not just for us either, but for everyone that follows you and looks up to you and relies on you.”

The air moves as she shifts her footing, and then I hear the faint sound of skin being rubbed, and Romana’s breathing becomes even more controlled. This is good. This is what I wanted.

“Come on, we need to get back to everyone else.” The words are decisive and the tone leaves no room for argument, not that I would have argued in the first place.

Her footsteps are rapid, as we move out of the room and back along the corridor. I follow the same path without hesitation, using the pattern of sounds to stay no more than a step or two behind her, moving quickly over a floor that may as well be a thousand miles below me.

“Romana, you are worrying me.”

The sound of a deep breath, and I can picture the way that her brows come together, making that crease down the middle of her forehead, towards her nose, when she’s thinking about something serious, considering it from every angle.

“We’ve been cut off by a Time Wall. We’re trapped, Leela. We can’t strike, we can’t go out for more supplies, our people on the outside can’t join us, and there is nowhere else to hide. There is no space or time, apart from what we’re in, right now. So you should be very worried.”

I can hear the sounds of everyone gathered together, in the large hall where we gather to plan and strategize, and talk about the fears and worries related to the war. Such a thing is cathartic in times of trouble and strife.

Now, however, the murmur of voices is tinged by a clear sense of fear, and I can tell from the warmth, that the people are gathered together tightly, in the same manner as a pack of frightened animals.

Romana is one of the calmest gathered here.

So, there was an advantage to my slapping her after all. It gives her strength of mind for when she needs it.

“Madam President, we have a problem.”

Two more steps into the room, moving past Romana, and I smell it, sharp and metallic, like iron in the air.

“Well, of course we have a problem!” Romana’s voice, raised in reply. “We’re…”

“Ronana,” Leela interrupted, ignoring the intake of breath at the rudeness of her action. Things like that had their time and place, and neither of them was now. “I can smell blood. A lot of blood.”

“What is she talking about?” Romana’s voice could have cut glass, as sharp as the tone was.

“That is what I was just about to tell you, Madam President. Narvin was at the boundary, when the Time Wall closed. We’ve got him in a room just off the hall, now.”

I do not know the full meaning of these words, but I know enough to know that it is not a good thing, especially as Romana’s hearts rate doubles from what has been said.

“How bad is it?”

I begin to follow the scent of blood, weaving between the people in the hall to this other room, seeking the end of the trail and another wounded friend. So much blood has been lost here, but I cannot smell the immediate odor of death, so I know that Narvin is still alive for now.

“He lost his right arm, just below the shoulder, and a lot of blood. We’ve stemmed the bleeding as much as we can, and pressed a seal to the wound, but the arm itself is on the other side.”

“And where is our medic?”

The voice seems almost distant as though the words do not matter in the face of what is happening, and I feel my heart tighten in my chest, hurting as though I’ve swallowed something both far too large and far too hot to be eaten.

“Also on the other side.”

“Well, that’s convenient, isn’t it?”

Romana’s hearts have slowed, and pulse a steady rhythm, reminding me of the pulse of war drums in the night.

The smell of blood and sweat is strongest here, the hearts that I can hear lower to the ground, which mean that he’s lying here. Even without that, Narvin has his own unique scent which I’ve come to recognize even more clearly since my world became darkness. It is the scent of a strange friend in a strange world.

His breathing is sharp, ragged and pained, and I hear the sound of him stirring as I drop into a crouch, on the balls of my feet beside him.

“In my tribe, if someone loses a limb, then the flesh is burned to stop the bleeding. Can this not be done for you?” I know that it has not yet happened because burned flesh has a very distinct smell.

“Told … them… no… no cauterising the wound.”

Narvin might say his words sharply and sound rude and abrupt, but he is like this with everyone. He does not speak down to me. I appreciate this and always have.

“But why? Surely it would be better for you.”

“Less… chance to… reattach the arm, if… if it’s cauterised. A… a seal, to… stop the bleeding. Two… two arms are… better than one.”

Again his breathing changes, evening out, and I know that he has slipped away from the shock and pain and is floating now, on the dark waters between knowing and feeling, experiencing neither of them.

I reach out, and rest a hand on a cheek for a moment, before straightening, my ears refocusing on Romana’s distinctive step, once again. She’s heading towards the door, and I run to catch up, and take my place at her side once again.

“I never could slip anything past you, could I, Leela?” Her voice is tired now, although her hearts still beat with that same steady beat.

“You have made a decision.” Again, it is not a question.

“You said it yourself. I need to end this war, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I am not going to stand around and watch one more person die, when I can stop it.”

Dread steals my breath, gripping like a vice. I know what she is going to say, but I still have to ask.

“What do you mean, Romana?”

“If Pandora wants me, then she can have me. I’ve dragged this out for too long, already.”

It is what I feared.

“Romana, you cannot do this. We need you here, with us!”

“I can, and I will.” The words are soft. Then she raises her voice, even as I reach out to grab her by the arm, to try and stop her from throwing herself to her version of the Hoarder. “You and you, restrain her.”

Hands grab me in the darkness, and although I could wrench the arms that those hands are attached to clean out of the sockets, I do not have the will to. I know that even if I stop her for now, I cannot stand guard over her every hour of Gallifrey’s days and nights. If Romana makes up her mind to do something, then she will do it.

I hear the words that are meant only for me, as Romana leaves the room, and me, behind.

“Stay strong, Leela. I need you to come and get me, later.”

I will. I promise.

Even though I do not have the Time Lord’s gift of talking with my mind, I think the words as hard as I can, and hope that somehow she hears them.

#doctor who #the-ripper-rides #presidentromana #gore for ts #blood for ts #fanfic #romana #leela #narvin #submission

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magicofthepen · 3 years

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Having put some amount of thought into similar concepts, I would very much love to hear about “Gallifrey BUT FANTASY”

Send me a WIP doc title (list here) and I’ll talk about it!

Thank you for asking about this one! It’s an idea that’s been slowly coalescing for at least a year and a half now – it’s never quite made it onto the active projects list because it’s a big one, and I keep having other big projects that I want to tackle first. But I love gradually coming back to and building this au, and hopefully I’ll write it eventually?

The general world premise is pretty straightforward: magic replaces both time travel and regeneration, so it’s a magic-based world instead of a tech-based one, and also the ability to do magic is only given to certain Gallifreyans (a Time Lords = mages sort of thing). Also in this world the different temporal powers/planets are different countries/kingdoms/empires.

The story itself would be a series of three longfics that starts with a very narrow cast and gradually broadens to a more sprawling epic fantasy vibe as the series continues. A quick overview:

Fic 1 is a Romana/Leela Rapunzel AU (inspired by Tangled specifically tbh), ft. Pandora as the Mother Gothel figure.

Fic 2 is the immediate aftermath of Romana’s return to Gallifrey and the "power struggle over the throne” conflict that emerges between her and Darkel. (Narvin and Brax show up in this one.)

Fic 3 is set some number of years after Fic 2. It’s a “Pandora returns” fic, but narratively it’s more inspired by the Time War. Devastating magical conflict, large cast of characters, but does have a hopeful/happy-ish ending. (Also: Romana/Leela/Narvin endgame.)

Lots more rambling under the cut:

Fic 1: Rapunzel AU

This fic is technically Tangled-inspired, but I should disclaim that I haven’t actually seen Tangled in many years, so my memories of it are somewhat vague? But there’s one scene from Tangled that inspired a scene in this fic, plus a certain similar enemies-to-friends-to-lovers vibe going on, and some inspiration for Leela’s backstory (if I’m remembering that movie correctly)?

Romana is the Rapunzel figure, of course. The heiress stolen away from the kingdom as a very young child, so she doesn’t remember anything before being raised by Pandora. In this story, Pandora’s endgame isn’t to keep her trapped away forever – she’s grooming Romana to be able to possess her when the time is right and take the throne for herself. (Still need to work out a lot of plot details, including how much contact Romana has with the outside world, how Pandora is able to manifest without a body?? (because she’s definitely still a dark spirit of some kind in this world....), the exact nature of magic and magical rituals and how exactly Pandora stealing Romana and raising her benefits her endgame.)

(Also there’s an Etra Prime reference here, with Romana being trapped away from the world for twenty years. In this au, Pandora is also the stand-in for the Daleks – aka who/what Romana is most afraid of and traumatized by.)

Leela’s backstory is a work in progress, so I don’t want to say too much in case I change it, but at the point her life and Romana’s collide, she’s lived in Gallifrey before and it was not a good time. (On a side note: I feel like this fic may be a thinly veiled excuse to give Leela a sword.)

This fic majorly focuses on Romana and Leela’s relationship arc, aka “extremely sheltered book smart mage who's been cut off from love and connection her whole life” meets “warrior who’s traveled a lot but has never really found a home anywhere and is (probably?) on the run from the Gallifreyan authorities for Reasons.” Short version: their lives collide, Romana gets tangled up in Leela’s plot drama (which is also mostly tbd) and ends up sneaking away from Pandora, they fall in love, just as Romana starts to see how much she’s been used and manipulated her whole life, Pandora tries to tear them apart and use both of them as pawns in her plan. Of course, they defeat her and all ends well (for now).

Fic 2: Struggle for the Throne

For Reasons (that will be uncovered later), the throne of Gallifrey has quite recently become vacant – just in time for Romana and Leela to show up in the capital city (they don’t ever go there in Fic 1). Romana just wanted to see where she was from after finally escaping Pandora, but in this world, Gallifrey has some sort of monarchy/inheritance of power thing going on, and Romana is actually the closest heir to the throne. The next closest is Darkel, who assumed she would take the throne, before Romana suddenly returns from the dead.

Except Romana didn’t come back to take the throne. That was Pandora’s plan, Romana doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life and had no idea that she was walking into a power vacuum situation. But she ends up seeing how very terrible Darkel is, and how very terrible Gallifrey is, and starts genuinely wanting to be in charge so she can Change Things. She sees how terrible Gallifrey is to Leela (and other outsiders and non-mages) and wants to make this place better for her.....but over time gets swept up in the power struggles and the need to court favor with the other royals, which strains her relationship with Leela.

Meanwhile, Leela’s dealing with returning to Gallifrey, a place where she already feels unwelcome (and probably is in some trouble with the law and needs to clear her name? again, lots of backstory details are tbd). And so she ends up struggling to decide if she really wants to be with Romana, if Romana’s going to end up in charge of this kingdom.....but she also hates Darkel and wants to help defeat her claim to the throne? I think there’s also going to be a plot thread in Fic 1 involving the village Leela was born in, and if so, this fic will also be dealing with the fallout of those events from Fic 1. (Keeping things vague because it’s all pretty up in the air right now.)

And we finally meet spymaster Narvin, who is a main character from here through the rest of the series! I’m not going to get into his backstory in this au right now (because some things are still tbd, some things I don’t want to spoil), but he is not pleased about this young upstart heiress showing up out of nowhere and getting power handed to her without ever actually living in this kingdom. He doesn’t trust that she’s actually loyal to Gallifrey, especially since rumor has it she was raised and given/taught magic by some dark spirit – which goes against the long-standing Gallifreyan traditions of how magic is granted and taught and raises some major questions about how safe the kingdom would be in her hands. (These are also the prevailing arguments in general for tossing Romana’s claim to the throne.)

Narvin and Leela also have.....a history. Not a particularly positive one.

So this fic is also slowburn enemies-to-friends with Narvin + Romana and Narvin + Leela, as they gradually grow to understand and trust each other, and ultimately all work together against Darkel.

Brax is also in this fic? I am quite nervous about Brax being in this fic (I don’t feel qualified to write Brax! I usually avoid writing Brax for that reason!) But he’s the main “well-respected mage from an old family” who actually vouches for Romana and tries to help soothe the fears of the more conservative royals about supporting her claim to the throne. I’d also like to do a version of the “Brax as Romana’s tutor” thing, where he ends up working with her on developing her magic, since she didn’t go through the Academy system and is worried that her magic is tainted by Pandora. There may also end up being an almost-arranged marriage plotline with Romana and Brax, where certain people would be more willing to support Romana’s claim if she married someone respectable (and this is another thing that drives a wedge in Romana and Leela’s relationship). (She ends up turning him down, ultimately.)

So it’s a fic about characters figuring out what they want in life and figuring out how to communicate better with each other and be better at relationships and friendships, all the while trying to stop Darkel from seizing the throne.

Fic 3: Magical War

So there’s a significant time skip between Fic 2 and Fic 3 where the characters are going about their lives post-Darkel’s defeat and trying to make Gallifrey a somewhat less terrible place.

But, however Romana and Leela defeat Pandora in Fic 1, it isn’t permanent. And when Pandora returns, it’s with an army of magical spirits (or something along those lines) that are slowly encroaching on the kingdom and poisoning magic itself (aka the Dogma virus But Fantasy).

I don’t want to spoil too many of the plot details here, but this fic is a lot of “fantasy twist on specific events in the Gallifrey audios” – it draws some elements from the civil war, some from the Time War (especially because of that whole “Pandora is also Metaphorically the Daleks” thing), plus some other Specific Things from other audios. (Basically, I tossed the Gallifrey audios in a soup and stirred and made it fantasy?)

Slow skirmishes and terrible attacks on the outskirts of the kingdom keep happening, Pandora’s forces draw closer and closer until they reach the capitol itself – and things go very wrong, and our main characters end up needing to wrest control back from Pandora (which may involve upending the entire system of magic in Gallifrey in the process? again, still figuring out how this fic is going to end – all I know is that unlike the actual audios, it will be a hopeful/happy ending). Lots of personal sacrifices are made, lots of old traumas need to be grappled with. Also re: Narvin/Leela and Narvin/Romana, this is the “friends to lovers” part of the “enemies to friends to lovers” slowburn arc.

(Probably my biggest writing struggle for this fic is that I don’t really know what Brax’s arc is going to be. I’m not that familiar with Brax (I only know him from the Gallifrey audios), and I’m not strongly invested in his character, so I don’t feel like I’d do a good job writing him? But this is an ensemble fic and I can’t just ignore his character, so. it’s a challenge I don’t yet know how to deal with?)

But overall, one of the reasons I’m quite interested in this fic series is because it gives me the chance to write a version of these characters’ stories where things do get rough, but they do get a happy ending of sorts. (And more specifically, I get to write a version of Romana’s story where her self-sacrificing/suicidal tendencies actually get addressed, and she slowly starts to heal.)

So that was a lot of rambling and vagueness, but thanks for giving me the excuse to talk about this au! It’s quite a daunting project (I have little experience with longfic and with plotty fic), but I’d really love to tackle it someday! (And I would love to hear about any fantasy aus you’ve developed!!)

#gallifreyanathearts #gallifrey audios #romana x leela #gallifrey ot3 #this idea didn't start out as three fics #it was a collection of multiple ideas that kept wanting to tie together and eventually morphed into this shape #and every time i spend time thinking about it i get very excited about it :)#also one of the many reasons i want to write fic 1 is that there is no romana/leela longfic and there should be #(i realize it would be an au fic But Still)#ramblings #asks

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notyoujamie · 7 years

Text

A crazy idea came to me this morning while thinking about this gifset of mine: What if the Doctor has indeed been a woman at some point in his life? And what if Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is not what comes after Peter Capaldi’s, but what was before him, before everyone, even before William Hartnell?

Obviously, this theory was shut down because of Listen. We see the young Doctor, a boy, hiding in the barn, and people referring to them as “he”. And English being a very gender-specific language, that was that. Until my wife said “What if the TARDIS translated it into English as a “he”? What if Gallifreyan doesn’t have gender-specific pronouns and the TARDIS just translated the only pronoun they have into the most general one always used when someone’s gender is not known?”

Let’s break it down.

A funny jab, yes. But is that it’s only purpose? Maybe not. We have seen the Doctor doesn’t give a toss about sexuality, gender, race, religion or anything our modern “civilized” society uses to determine who people are and how much they are worth. The Doctor often references people who have fancied him, be they men or women or Algae, and never shows any kind of disgust or emotion that would show he did not fancy them as well.

“Since the Cloister Wars. Since the night he stole the moon and the President's wife. Since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie.” Since we have already seen the young Doctor as a boy, we automatically assume the lie is the last one. Then we see this:

The lie is who the woman with him was: not the President’s wife but his daughter. So, the last one is true, then?

Again, a funny jab. The Doctor might have been in disguise or the priestesses weren’t in fact too bothered by the gender of the other priestesses, but let’s assume the Doctor actually was a female during his time as a Vestal Virgin, not pretending to be one.

And then there’s this moment. It is so beautiful, because it shows the Doctor has lived so long he doesn’t remember what or who he used to be before (see Heaven Sent and 4,5 billion years). Also, he doesn’t care. As he says, for Time Lords (even though they call themselves Time Lords), gender doesn’t matter. Perhaps they indeed have only one gender-neutral pronoun and refer to themselves as Time Lords, which in Gallifrey is gender-neutral as well, but can’t be translated into English (by the way, are we ever explained why the Doctor can speak English from the start without everyone he ever meets having been to the TARDIS and being translated to by her?).

Now, let’s go back to that moment in Listen and look more closely at the child in the bed.

We never see them too well. Their short hair and childish voice could disguise any gender! So, the only indicator is our knowledge that they are the Doctor and that the people talking refer to them as “he”. But taking into account that Gallifrey has it’s own alphabet, it most definitely has its own language which is definitely not English! Without analysing why the Doctor can speak English from the start and not some alien mumbo-jumbo, let’s assume this is the TARDIS translating a generic, gender-neutral Gallifreyan pronoun into its most generic English variant: he.

At this point, let’s talk about regeneration:

The War Doctor is included in the mix, like Eleventh himself says (so, technically Jodie Whittaker is the 14th Doctor, and Peter Capaldi the 13th). So, 12 regenerations, 13 personalities. And I really don’t buy Eleventh’s “number ten once regenerated and kept the same face. I had vanity issues at the time.“ Tenth himself says, “Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but soon as I was done, I didn't need to change. I didn't want to. Why would I? Look at me.“ Yeah, vain, but he also has the same personality. Same body, same character, same Doctor. And we know the Doctor can control the regenerations at least a little bit:

Look at the last one. He is so determined never to be someone else ever again he physically stops the regeneration process several times.

And this is going a bit off-topic, but requires attention: the Doctor we have now, Peter Capaldi, is assumed to be the first of the new regeneration cycle. He is supposed to be the first of the thirteen new personalities of the Time Lord we know as the Doctor. But we know he can control his regenerations. We know the Tenth Doctor who only used the regeneration powers to heal himself also had the same personality. He continued to be the same Doctor. So, Peter Capaldi’s Doctor would be the thirteenth personality, the last one in the first cycle. So, what if - and this is where we go back to my original hypothesis - Jodie Whittaker’s “13th” Doctor is not a new one but the original, the woman the child we saw in Listen grew up to be. This would mean that either the First Doctor was a woman all along OR (and I don’t think it really matters which) Time Lords can control their gender just as they control their regeneration: if they want to change something, like heal themselves or change their gender, they can do that without changing too much of their character as well.

What if the TARDIS takes the Twelfth Doctor back to meet the First Doctor to see where he started from? What if instead of remembering what he used to be and how much he has grown, he decides its better to go back altogether, to his own planet, to his own people, and see if he could do it better this time round?

So, maybe now that the first regeneration cycle is complete, it’s time for the Doctor to meet his first regeneration, something happens (as it always does), time fractures, and he goes back in time to where he started:

Imagine the possibilities this has! We could see the Doctor as they were before running away. We could see Gallifrey before the Time War (which is extreme fun, if you have watched the classic series, since Doctor always just waves bye-bye and goes off to have adventures, even though his superiors are knocking on his door). We could see the Master as he was; the Doctor’s best friend!

We might just see the Doctor, the original Doctor going around Gallifrey or time and space (who says they only stole a TARDIS once?) before growing scared of the Time Lords’ way of life, regenerating into the First Doctor and running away with Susan Foreman. Or we might see Peter Capaldi regenerate into Jodie Whittaker and hear her say, “Finally! Back to the original!”, and off she goes to travel time and space as the newly regenerated new Doctor.

If the Doctor hadn’t been rewarded another regeneration cycle in The Time of the Doctor, this would mean the beginning of an end: the Doctor going back to the beginning and starting the cycle again. But since this is Doctor Who, if Jodie is the original Doctor, something happens at the end of her era which will regenerate her into the first Doctor of the second regeneration cycle, ie. the 14th Doctor.

#dwedit #doctorwhoedit #dw spoilers #spoilers #text

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