my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “laudanum-dosed wine at the villa diodati on lake geneva in 1816” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever i don’t feel shit

5 minutes later: dude i swear i just saw mary shelley and claire clairmont talking about reanimation and vampires with lord byron

my buddy percy pacing: dr. john polidori is plotting against us and my wifes nipples have been replaced by eyeballs

I think about them constantly. They need a sitcom, I'm begging

Gothic (1986)

Gothic kicks ass. Poor doomed Richardson and Sands as the poor doomed Shelleys, Byrne as Byron, Timothy Spall, and a demonic laudanum nightmare at Villa Diodati. Gorgeous, but Dolby’s score is a weird match.

Doctor Who s12e08: The haunting of Villa Diodati

LORD BYRON HAS BEEN DEAD FOR TWO HUNDRED SLUTTY, SLUTTY YEARS.

thirteen's era appreciation: 368/?

Thasmin || Doctor Who 12x08 - The Haunting of Villa Diodati

this still from bride of frankenstein always gets me because it just captures their vibe perfectly. mary's ethereal charm and serious deadpan expression like she's on the office. byron with his hand on his hip, cock on full display, and the most dramatic collar ever. shelley with his legs crossed and his adorable wrinkled bow. how they kind of look like they could be trying to hold hands behind mary's back. truly an honorable contender for best geneva squad casting

Watching the Doctor Who Series 12 Closer Looks with Jodie bringing up the Doctor losing Bill, can’t believe people claimed she knew nothing about what happened previously on Doctor Who just making up bad faith arguments to slander such a good person actually makes someone a really shit person. She frustrated by the way people treated Jodie so unfairly with ‘facts’ that only existed in their own heads.

From the Haunting of Villa Diodati

i love you houses that confound and mislead. i love you the doctor falling into an inevitable trap despite jack’s forewarnings because she was always going to give the lone cyberman what he wanted, the story could never have transpired any other way. i love you unhinged threatening thirteen so full of compassion for a single historical figure that she risks the future fate of history itself to save his life — that’s the most doctor-y decision she’s ever made, short term kindness over long term heroic sweeping gestures no matter where that leads, no matter who it sacrifices (and it’s morally questionable in the utilitarianism vs personal feelings way; similar to some of twelve’s moral dilemmas, not in the shallow ass “guns are bad so we’ll just suffocate these spiders to death” way). i love you hyperbolic-but-accurate portrayals of the geneva squad authors and co. i love you the implied possibility of ghosts being real. i love you thirteen asserting her authority and committing a sneaky little telepathic time lord atrocity (showing percy shelley his death which incidentally gives a fictional explanation to his real-life obsession with death by drowning, which eventually led to his death by drowning. i digress) — something she hasn’t been given the opportunity to do before. i love you cybermen-as-the-inspiration-for-frankenstein. i love you “she was the universe”. i love you claire clairmont standing up for herself and realising what a manipulative prick byron was to her. i love you the haunting of villa diodati

It's so funny to me that Chris Chibnall wrote both Cyberwoman and the Timeless Children because it shows that at one point he DID understand the horror of the Cybermen- that they were formerly people, that they are what's left of a person that is no longer there, that they are a corpse puppeted by a machine, that there is a human component at the center and the horror comes from seeing your former loved one scooped out and your hope forever being cursed to a futile one...to nameless extra Time Lords being made into basically robots except they can regenerate this time. Like, what the hell happened? Did he just spend so long thinking about the Timeless Children plot twist that he just fundamentally misunderstood why the Cybermen are terrifying or how they can be used to add to the tragedy of the plot?

Tell me what fundamentally changes if you make the Cybermen in Haunting of Villa Diodati/Ascension/Timeless Children basic robotic killing machines. Hell, what changes if you make them Daleks? Not once did they seek to convert the Doctor/her allies. If anything, their suits were just used as disguises.

Imagine if during the disguise part of the story the suits had come alive and started converting the team or hell, outright converted one of them. Imagine if they had to deal with the horror of that. Imagine if THAT is what caused Ryan/Graham to realize they didn't want to travel with the Doctor anymore. Hell, you could save them at the last moment if you want and leave them shaken up, just have them experience SOME true horror/fear. If Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel could do that with Jackie Tyler and Cyberwoman could do that with Lisa Hallett in a bone-chiling manner, you could do that with your team. I get if you were trying not to turn your third black companion in a row into a Cyberman, but in that case either sacrifice Graham or Yaz or don't do them at all if you're not going to use them for their express purpose/mechanic within the story.