There’s something about the man he’d asked for directions that makes the drumbeat in Sam’s head grow louder, closer. It’s a terrifying and extremely uncomfortable experience, and he’s clutching his head with both hands before he even gets a chance to speak. They’ve never been this bad.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the man looks almost exactly like him, except older, and grayer. He hasn’t met the Doctor, yet, won’t for probably another six months, if he even makes it out of this situation.
The stranger’s hand on his back seems to calm him and unnerve him all at once, the drumbeat making one final klaxon before finally, thankfully growing dull once more.
“Um. Sorry. I was just in London, and this isn’t London?”
The Master observes his young, parallel self with rarest pity. Compassion is something he’s not wont to offer, not even toward himself; more than he realizes, he speaks in the voice of his loomers, of his House and his whole heartsless caste, when he castigates himself for any failing great or small. Self-loathing, from the avowed narcissist: it’s not so implausible, actually.
He squeezes the fobwatched doppleganger’s upper arms.
“I dunno what name you go by, but I do know you. You’ve surely not missed that we look exactly alike. But the things you don’t know yet, you don’t know for a reason, and I’m not eager to upset that delicate amnesia. Might do you damage. How you ended oop here could be by one of many routes, including a TARDIS and a Vortex Manipulator. Either term ring a bell?”
He lifts one hand off, and gestures emphatically for focus.
“You know what, before any of that, what DO you call yourself? And please, please, don’t say ‘Harold.’”
Koschei has never needed many friends; despite his exhibitionistic desire for as many acolytes as he can get, these aren’t the same as friends, and it’s even been to his own personal detriment that he prefers substance to numbers. He’s one to fixate on individual interests–including people–with a dangerous myopia. Even so, he could use a few more friends beyond the Doctor and, arguably, the Rani. Unfortunately even in school, the Deca considered him Theta Sigma’s toady more than his own autonomous entity.
what would your character make a scene in public about?
What WOULDN’T he make a scene in public about, LMAO. If I had to narrow it down to specific triggers, probably the desire for external validation that he is right and has merit, which…kind of magnifies itself pathologically into this narcissistic hunger for endless praise. He is actually quite dependent on others, without realizing it, in this way: he needs to make an ostentatious display of his victories, and he needs to publicly humiliate his enemies.
how does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project?
Vastly, surprisingly enough. Behind every superiority complex is an anxiety about inferiority, and the need to abundantly overcompensate. Despite an appearance of extraversion–particularly in the Simm face–the Master is extremely self-conscious and shy about deeply felt emotions. You won’t see that shyness, ever, unless you are someone he trusts and respects (people of whom he can count on his hand) who catches him off-guard with sincere praise. But then he will be deeply bashful. Koschei was actually always far shier and more reserved than Theta Sigma, in school. His pretense of cavalierness is also false: he is extremely meticulous and methodical. His pretense of worldliness? Also false. He can be extremely, childishly naive. This doesn’t mean he’s not an experienced adult, but his lapses in judgment can be astonishing. When he pretends to despise someone? Usually that’s the product of jealousy or anger toward someone he truly cares for. His disdain for compassion? False also, though only in special cases. It just SCARES him to care about someone else because it produces an enemy an opportunity for leverage. Which brings me to: courage? Yes. But. Specifically because he is almost always afraid of something, and hiding that fear. Finally, the inexplicable misogyny in Utopia, Last of the Time Lords, and especially The Doctor Falls? Considering the Master, like all Time Lords, is nobinary, and doesn’t recognize human gender distinctions, his disdain for “girls” is a stupid arbitrary bit of bad writing with zero basis in Classic Who. Oddly enough the writing in The Doctor Falls is self-contradictory in this manner, as the Master dresses and self-presents as nonbinary, with heavy eye makeup and yet with facial hair (he does the same, actually, in End of Time). So I write it off as him using whatever weapons in his arsenal he knows will hurt his (human) enemies. Like Martha, Jack, and Bill. Notice that when he’s with Missy, who is himself, and therefore someone he respects, NOT an enemy, and NOT a human, he refrains from any gendered insults altogether.
AU-The Master mutates after his resurrection finds a way to stay alive by using the power found in power lines and absorbs it.
Very lowkey inspired by Thor’s latest powers where lightning is shown to give him “flight” and lightning emits from and engulfs his body. It takes the form of “wings” here because aesthetics. I’m going to continue developing this au for my simm!master rp blog @simplicity-of-control
Icarus 