//You know that’s not true and I can’t see any forthright reason why you would discourage people sticking up for the three-dimensionality of a female character.
Her voice echoes for miles, the chatter of bystanders fading into a stunned silence. They may have not been part of it before, but all eyes were on the small blonde woman who shook with rage.
Her entire being bristles with power and commanding energy, far larger than life or even her current, unfortunately petite body.
Hazel eyes pin the offender with blazing fury.
“I said NO! You have no right! No right to harm these people! This planet is protected by the Doctor, and if you know what’s good for yourself, you’ll take a moment to think about EXACTLY what that means before you take another step.”
The Master’s whole body electrifies. Nipples harden, hair pricks, goosebumps surface. Fight or flight, the struggle between sane survivalism and the mad, abject, sublime desire to run toward the tornado, to pitch over the edge of the waterfall, to stand screaming and beating one’s chest in the hurricane. To be saturated wholly with the violence and the fury contained within the being he unthinkingly adores.
And he does. He runs toward the conflict, straight out of the TARDIS he’s strictly ordered not to leave, for fear of the disruption of TARDIS energy healing his back. He forgets himself when eclipsed in her shadow. He always has. Always will.
He catches her ‘round the waist and spins her out of the way of the people she’s antagonizing.
“Thete, STOP, they’re armed–!”
A musket fires, and grazes the Doctor’s bondmate in the side. A superficial wound, nowhere near the fatal shot inflicted by Chan-Tho, or Lucy, or by a random insignificant Mondasian gunman on Bill Potts. But Koschei goes down just the same, with a startled grunt, and cups his left side, and falters down onto the wound, trembling.
“Shit,” he snarls, trying in vain to stand.
Graham: “The Doc’s such a great person.” Yaz: “The best person I’ve ever met. I’m in love with her.” Ryan: “Inspiring. I have so much fun with her.”
The Master: *who knows Theta Sigma, and knows the Doctor, and has for millennia, and has seen the absolute best and absolute worst, the whole gamut, and to this day has not abandoned the Doctor for being arguably (capable of) more evil than he could ever be, is unafraid to call her out on her bullshit, but also adores her, and will be there after everyone else has gotten disillusioned and left* :
The Master rolls out from under the Console, where he’s been performing long hours of system maintenance. His arms are smeared in engine grease up to the elbow, and he wears an apron over his black jumper and trousers. He sits up, pleased that one of the Doctor’s new collectible humans has decided to do more than squint and gawk at him.
“On again, off again, but usually on and hiding it, for the better part of our lives. We were eight. Eight, when we met. Both boys, then. Then I was a girl, and the Doctor was a boy. Then, both boys, I think … ? I dunno, the Doctor might’ve been a girl once or twice when I wasn’t ‘round. Now here we are, boy, girl. I’m due to be a girl again next. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.”
He stands and luxuriously stretches, with a satisfied grunt at work well done. He lopes to the custard dispenser, dispatches one, and a second one, which he hands to Graham. He takes a fierce bite.
“Mm. Mm-HMM. Anyhow, we’ve been … all sorts of different people, far beyond the vicissitudes of gender. Somehow we remain as compatible as magnetic poles. Even though she left me, and I held a grudge for centuries, and we wasted … . appalling amounts of time fighting.”
“Seriously, that long?” he says, taking the biscuit and eating it. He doesn’t say it, but he kinda wants to knock their heads together for, as Koschei put it, wasting all that time. He can’t even imagine knowing someone for centuries, let alone spending most of it arguing.
He just knows that even centuries with Grace wouldn’t have been enough.
“Well, at least you figured it out in the end. Think it’ll stick this time?”
A dull patina of melancholy and regret descends over the Master. He catches his own transparent expression of despair. He smiles grayly at Graham.
He knows what the old mortal is thinking. It sears him with shame, and with anger, with the urge to flare you don’t understand, but weariness wins today.
“There are many reasons, but none of them would formulate an excuse you’d accept. We are friends before we are enemies or even lovers. I would adore her, in any face, any gender, any age, and I would follow her over the impossible edge of the ever-expanding universe. I would wish to consume, to demolish, anything between us, for eternity. But occasionally all that ardor gets converted into toxic energy, and we fight. And she certainly gets in her punches.”
His smile grows a little more wan.
“I just realized. You don’t know. You’ve never seen her really lose herself to her temper, have you? Never seen people disregard her sermonizing and her interfering, and seen her,” his teeth grate on edge with the word, “sna-p.”
A hushed laugh escapes. Hushed, or breathless, with a knowing pain.
“Oh, my friend. None of you lot had better leave her when you see it. Or I will be the one to come for you.”
//Also since I’m in one of my bitchier more outspoken moods, I’m honestly really tired of everyone acting like Thirteen is a pure slice of uncomplicated goodness, because that is a disservice TO THIRTEEN. And it makes me twice as angry because she’s a FEMALE muse and I swear it’s like if a muse is a woman she has to be flawless or people will drop her; meanwhile a male muse can be indefinitely angst-ridden, misunderstood and flawed–basically the formula for an interesting character REGARDLESS of gender–and nobody complains. In fact it’s perceived as an asset.
Look, the Doctor has definitely improved in leaps and bounds. She’s far fairer, far less arrogant, far more compassionate, capable of short-cirtuiting her self-centered impulses.
But she is still also cocky, intrusive, presumptuous, rude, occasionally fickle, distractible and sanctimonious.
And cruel. Despite Twelve’s own lesson to himself, and though the Doctor will always be MORE than the sum of their mistakes, the Doctor will also always be capable of a cruel absolutism, the all-or-nothing madness of a fanatic and a vigilante. That’s just THE DOCTOR. The Doctor IS the Oncoming Storm.
This face is a harbinger of hope, yes. She is highly evolved from her past faces. But growth is not linear. Goodness is not consistent. “Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be fought for and struggled for and won.” ~Dead Man Walking.
Let the Doctor be the Doctor. Allow flaws, and STILL love her.
Icarus 