//So you all know my Master muse is neurodivergent, right? One of the things that he deals with is Sensory Processing Disorder.
You can imagine how this can genuinely madden you if you also hear an incessant loud four-beat-rhythm in your head.
Thanks, Rassilon, you mold-encrusted breadloaf.
“What a peculiar question. Are you trying to sneak me an overdose? But no. I’m not particularly fond of any form of losing control. If I’m feeling especially secure, I might imbibe in hard liquor spiked with ginger. Whiskey is a favorite. Aside alcohol, I’ve experienced cocaine, which was a serious misjudgment, as it rendered my auditory hallucinations at the time deafening, and Ecstasy, which was … . intriguing, but ultimately embarrassing. Both times, during my Harold Saxon stint.”
Ask my muse about their relationships.
“Well YOU certainly aren’t shy. Good golly.”
The Master leans back in his jumpseat, arms crossed overhead, and examines the ceiling as though in post-coital conquest. the space instantly becomes his own, without him doing anything else; he is unquestionably in charge, with that single calculated physical act.
“We were young. The human equivalent of sixteen. It was, for our complete inexperience, alarmingly pleasing, almost dangerously intense, because we had no idea what we were doing, and even holding hands is completely forbidden in Time Lord circles, so you can imagine what an orgasm feels like in a touch-starved society to touch-starved adolescents. Physical affection is relegated to the so-called ‘lesser castes’ of Gallifrey, and ‘inferior’ life forms. But we always found ourselves touching each other physically when we were alone together, so one day alone in the fields of Mount Perdition, we most certainly lost ourselves. We both wept and we didn’t even know why, not at the time. We were rubbish at it and yet it was wonderful.
“As for looming a child with the Doctor, I already have. And if you so much as lay a finger on my daughter, I will devise creative ways to make you scream for death long before I grant it to you.”
Do you have a favorite AU?
My entire blog at this point is an AU, lol. It’s kind of a necessity because I’m committed to this particular iteration of the Master (wonderful as they are in all their faces) and in canon it’s heavily implied that he’s regenerated into Missy by the end of The Doctor Falls. So in the sense that I have AU’s, they are literally all at least canon-divergent after the end of Series Ten. I think my favorite AU’s are those in which he survived Missy’s stabbing and reconciled with the Thirteenth Doctor some time after her own regeneration. Both Simm and Missy have shown us that the Master is capable of contrition and redemption; that combined with the fact that Thirteen has regained the hopefulness that the Doctor lost for several faces tell me that it’s an ideal combination for a real Thoschei reconciliation. Simm has seem the future, has seen his own stupidity, and knows the choices Missy is willing to make on the Doctor’s behalf. With some soul-searching he’d realize that’s what he, too, wants: his friend back. And Thirteen is surely contrite for Twelve’s misguided attempts to “rehabilitate” Missy. They’d both be willing to listen to each other now.
Name one thing you don’t like about your character.
I don’t like his limitless capacity for cruelty. Which often makes it difficult to write him, considering it’s such an enormous part of his mature character. But again, the ability to crush his enemies (and friends) and the CHOICE not to, are such a compelling challenge for a writer, that I keep coming back for more.
Name one thing you love about your character.
His persistence, and his resilience. His defiance. His certitude that his path is right (which on the flip side can be a reckless arrogance), even if he must tread it alone. His strength of resolve. He is a lion, brutal though he may be.
What one character you’ve thought of RPing but haven’t yet?
Oh there are several, LOL. But I’m notorious for multi-tasking past my limits, and having, as a friend recently told me (god, I cringed) “fickle” muses. So I’m trying to limit myself from making still more blogs. For some reason, having a multimuse has never worked for me; I like to fixate singularly on a character, and make sideblogs for weaker or rarer muses. So unless I want literally like 15 blogs…lol…. Anyway the characters I’ve thought of rping. Rhys Griffiths from The Catch is the most recent urge, and he still hasn’t gone away. John Simm plays him, too, but he’s so similar to the Simm Master (with several notable differences, including a way more laid-back, lazy disposition) that despite him being a delightful disaster (my kind of character LOL), I decided instead to make a Mob Boss AU (Rhys is an English mob boss who hands the title over to his sister in favor of working with his best friend, a con man, as a consultant to the FBI). I dunno, I may cave in, aside the fact that the show only lasted 2 seasons and the fandom is nonexistent. Other characters: Sebastian Moran and Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes. I’ve played Sebastian before, for years, but since I ship him with Jim Moriarty and I have a Jim blog, I’m still hoping someone else’s Sebastian will show up on the regular (and also be of age…cause…yeah I won’t do nsfw threads with minors. EVER.) Irene is like a huge thorn in my side because original books Irene is a goddess but nobody, except maybe the Jeremy Brett series Irene and the Rachel McAdams Irene, has ever portrayed her anywhere close to book canon. So I’m like “FINE, I’ll just do it!” lmao. I’m still seriously considering her.
What fandom do you like but have never interacted with?
I can’t think of any honestly. If I like a fandom I pretty much intrepidly dive in. That’s exactly my problem lmfao.
Name one thing about your character(s) that no one knows about.
This is also challenging because I LOVE sharing headcanons lmfao. Maybe this: He really liked being a woman before (yeah, I headcanon that Missy isn’t the first Time Lady Master, because it makes zero sense in a nonbinary gender-liberated society???) and looming a child. He would actually like to be a woman again, and even to try old-fashioned pre-looming pregnancy, but he’s very leery of regenerating, because he has ambivalent feelings about becoming Missy (much as he adores and worships her, lol) given his last experience with her. So likely nothing will ever come of this.
If your character(s) were paint colors, what would their paint color names be? (Go silly if you want!)
Black hole; smoldering red resentment; belly fire; absent night; LOL. Terrifying variations on red and black.
what would completely break your character?
The Doctor leaving him again. Of her own volition, or in death; emotionally, or physically, or both. That one’s very, very simple. You have no idea. Even when she gives him no reason to fear it, he’s afraid of it daily because it is the One Thing that would make him give up, and he would take the universe with him.
Other question answered here.
what seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character?
Any pleasant downtime spent with the Doctor when they were young boys has lasted with the Master. Watching the suns rise after a night of revelry, stealing TARDIS parts and building their own bastardized inventions. The feel of their hands accidentally brushing together in a society that scorned and condemned physical affection. The look of Theta Sigma’s blond curls damp on the nape of his neck because their Prydonian robes were sweltering, in the back of class. Bad things, too. The smell of the air ascending the hill toward the Untempered Schism. The color of Ailla’s nails when she announced her betrayal. The smell of his daughter’s nursery blanket when he (she) smelled it one last time, before abandoning Gallifrey. The feel of his skin like moldy raisins and beef jerky and sandpaper scraping his muscles when he desperately needed a new body. The sensation of death when the Time Council executed him; the sensation of resurrection, startling and too bright and cold. The clamminess of his skin after his wife Lucy shot him. The smell of the Doctor’s aftershave in the same moment. Hunger when he was resurrected, hunger that could not be satiated.
Other question answered here .
how many friends does your character want?
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.
//See below the cut for a complete b//d.s/m profile of the Master
“Quite frankly, while I find the premise extraordinarily clever, I haven’t been quite able to utilize it since losing the Drums. I think I began to associate the constant over-stimulation of my senses, which I used mindfulness to combat, with the meditative practice itself. Now whenever I try to use it, I begin to feel agitated, due to the connection. This is usually when I seek out the Doctor for guided imagery and influenced affect–that is, the directing of my emotions to more calming waters–through the use of Time Lord touch-telepathy. It works far better when I have this… . ah. Aid.”
“How dare you, you tick? You flea sucking on a dungfly. Who do you think I am? A piece of meat for your latest tabloid thrill? BACK OFF.”
It’s with a stage actor’s gut-based projection that the Master thunders these words. After a moment of morbidly curious consideration, however, he drops his laser hand to his side.
“First of all, mention Ailla again, and I will flay you with a dull spoon. She was only the confirmation of suspicions I held already, about my place in the cosmos; all that she did was allow me to realize that I was safer traveling alone. Don’t bore me with the tediousness of recalling her. I became the Master for all intents and purposes when I was a small child and I believed I had murdered a schoolyard bully who was trying to drown my best friend. That was the germ. The seed. The soil had already been tilled to a fertile state by my failure to pass the Test of the Untempered Schism. I stood before it, heard nothing but the Drums that so long plagued me thereafter–furbished by Rassilon himself, ruining my young mind for his own skin’s sake–and wet myself. I was dragged off that mountainside ill with fear, and my looming parents? Oh, if you can even call them parents, and not donors, sponsors. They made it clear that I had also failed to serve my purpose for being born. It was on a bribe to a High Council elder that I was admitted into the Prydonian Academy at all. And oh, the whole of House Oakdown made certain I knew this every day my hearts beat from that moment on. We were already newbloods, you see: we had much to prove, and I had not pulled my weight. So I spent every second of every hour of every day studying, practicing, reciting, learning. Perfecting myself.
“Combine those two early experiences, and I suppose you had the brain-cocktail that made me so very desperate to reject the gnawing futility, the pointlessness, the smallness, of my existence, or anyone else’s. Conflate that with my seeming capacity to harness death from a young age, and I learned that the way that I could become notorious was through infamy: through the resolute conquest of mortality itself.
But if you’re asking for the moment that I decided to don that moniker, it was not any shallow act of self-promotion within or without the Academy. It was not the day I became a Time Lady for the first time, and married for status, and loomed a daughter; it was not the day, earlier even than that, that the Doctor did the same. It was not the day the Deca disbanded. It was not various temptations, not the Darkheart device. It was the day he left Gallifrey, and didn’t take me with him. Because you see, there’s a flaw in your logic. You want me to hate the Council, the Elders, the whole of Time Lord society, even the whole of Gallifrey, because they gave me the Drums, and targeted me incessantly as a scapegoat for their corruptions, and captured and executed and resurrected and experimented on me. But that’s the very rub: I knew all along they were worthless. I knew all along they were rotten, and stifling, and cruel. I knew it from youngest childhood, thanks to my ‘family.’
“I never loved those people. Never pinned my hopes on them. Never took their hand in a red field of grass, never met them under cover of silver trees to tinker with contraband pieces of TARDIS or with a thing lesser species called ‘physical affection.’ Never spent hours entwined limbs and minds with them, exploring the euphorias of touch telepathy. Never played with them, ran with them, made plans with them, charted stars with them, danced with them, dreamt with them. That was all Him. He was my sole antidote to that desperate scheme to control mortality itself. And when He left, I realized there was no alernative. When He left, I grasped hold of my madness and made it my sole badge of honor.
“That was the day I burned the prints off my fingers and had my birthname expunged from all public records.
Icarus 