//this will invariably draw anon hate but i really don’t mean it divisively.

i’ve just been, for days, months (years lol) trying to figure out why exactly simm!master, whom so many people now just…openly despise…is still my favorite master.

and i think the main reason is still the marked, strong metaphor of chronic invisible illness posed by “the drums.”

BUT. there’s another reason.

examining photosets on my dash today, from episodes with other masters, especially in new who, the most marked characteristic about the simm!master is his DEFIANCE. of all things that try to hinder him, but particularly, of the doctor. which sounds strange coming from a hardcore thoschei shipper, but hear me out.

from one vantage point, that defiance can read as folly, as self-defeat, as an idiotic determination to despise someone you once loved, as miserly and small-minded, and it is, no doubt.

but shift your perspective, and that defiance reads as a refusal to accept at face value the sometimes equally small-minded, chauvinistic, sanctimonious twaddle of the doctor. though this post isn’t about missy, she is the one who said it best: “[the doctor’s] version of good is not absolute. it’s vain, arrogant, sentimental.”

and where even missy has decided it is best to compromise, to choose her battles, to bide her time, with the doctor, simm!master remains the ONLY person in all of new who, except Donna Noble (incidentally my favorite companion), who steps back and says, “oh bullshit. knock off this nonsense. i’ll gladly take you down a few pegs, right here and right now, if you don’t. i will say ‘tough’ when you say sorry; i will say ‘i refuse’ when you order me to do something.” outright, without censure.

and as stupid and self defeating as simm!master is, i think that’s something about him that i find perennially refreshing. there have been periods of doctor who that have suffered from “the doctor is a genius so we pardon everything the doctor says and does unproblematically,” and sometimes even missy is pulled (by specific writers, not by the essence of her character) into that trap of making the entire show about congratulating the doctor’s brilliance, about basking in the doctor’s danger and charisma. when the core of doctor who has always actually been celebrating the people around the doctor that have ended up teaching the doctor as much as or more than the doctor teaches them.

and i dunno, somehow, simm!master’s “fuck you” attitude toward the doctor lends itself more to content that says “yeah actually, the doctor is hugely flawed.” and just. removes absolute power from the doctor and from people writing the doctor’s narrative who want to identify with an unapologetic asshole that nobody checks or tells “hey, that wasn’t cool.”

this is not to say other masters don’t in their own way defy the doctor–especially in classic who. but i just. i think it’s interesting that when simm!master was reprised after a decade, during the era that most often falls for the “let’s all masturbate to the doctor’s awesomeness” trope, somehow the simm!master’s “doctor, you’re full of shit and here’s why” tendency was twisted into “i’m such an asshole that nobody should listen to the way i criticize the doctor anyway. i’m such an asshole that my judgment is called into question. pay no attention to the man in black, he’s a moron and a pitiful excuse for a version of the master.” all to prop up the doctor’s motivations as unquestionably noble. i just kinda go “hmmm” at that. i really do.

it was a very clever maneuver that had nothing to do with the master and everything to do with the existing DW staff’s highly self-conscious self-justifications.

but as for me, the brusque asshole that nobody loves, who screams “NO” in the doctor’s face, is still my favorite, by virtue of his very defiance.

everyone has “their” doctor. as for me, i have my master. and my master is an impenitent hellraiser.

Will you talk about your daughter more? The one still on Gallifrey?

“I don’t deserve Arcadia. It’s most simple. For whatever reason, however, she’s accepted my offer to be her mother again. My wife found her and brought her to the Citadel. She never obtained her regeneration cycle, but I don’t count her a failure. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t finish at the Academy; she was thrust young into the Time War. She has the eyes I had when she was loomed: an intense and jeweled blue. And her father’s ginger hair. She is quiet, and ferocious, but she holds it all in. There is a joy and a playfulness that come out, though, when the two of us work on her telepathy lessons. Because you see, she also inherited my prodigal gift for telepathic manipulation. I wonder if she knows how proud I am.”

@touchedbytcme

Worst decision you’ve ever made/almost had to make ?

“ … twofold. One: the day on the Valiant that I chose to die, rather than join the Doctor in his pretense of ‘keeping’ me. Seeing it as tantamount to a prison was short-sighted. It would have been a partnership. He was ready. I was the one who fell short that day. My need to make him feel what it had been to be abandoned by him eclipsed my screaming longing to be at his side. And then I made the same damned mistake on Mondas. But the other decision that I regret was leaving behind my daughter on Gallifrey, eons ago, to chase the Doctor to Earth. I had just regenerated from my first Time Lady face–yeah, heh … surprised Missy wasn’t the first? I don’t talk about my days of motherhood often … . anyway, I had just regenerated from her, into the face that antagonized the Doctor’s third face. What a time that was. And yet she never knew me. I left my girl behind when she was still an infant.”

forgediinfire replied to your post:
Doctor: *gets angry and/or dom* Master:

What a fucking bottom slut

The most bottom slut to ever slut

Doctor: *gets angry and/or dom*

Master:

//I don’t have much time left b4 my net is cut off for several days so just imagine this:

Simm Master grudgingly doing altruistic things at first because it pleases the Doctor and eventually, over time, because he redevelops the conscience he had as a Time Tot; all the while his ruthless pragmatism never fades, so this leads him to do things like run out of a burning building, saving his own skin, then snagging his conscience, rolling his eyes and groaning, running back in, and carrying a small child back out overhead like Simba, clothes singed, hissing “SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!” through his teeth, angry at himself for going soft, grouchy, the grumpiest reluctantly heroic evil koala.

You just smiled didn’t you. Go ahead it’s okay. Smile at the dumb evil asshole going the way of Missy in the Vault.

He rushes to the TARDIS doors, flings them open, thrusts his head out into the vacuum of space and s c r e a m s . There’s no sound, despite the strain of his lungs and throat, despite the veins in his neck and temple, despite the redness of his face.

But sometimes all the memories, pains, torments, insufficiencies, frustrations and fears cluster in the confines of his head, too small for his brain and all his thoughts and ambitions, and he has to expel it all in one wild animal gesture.

He staggers back and closes the doors, rubs his temples and stumbles to sitting on the grates.

( I spotted the choice ask and just had to ask this ) If there was ever a case , as implusible as it is , were you did lose them , what would you do ? .

“I can’t answer your question, because if the Doctor died, there would not be enough of me left to exact an effective action of any kind. Except to annihilate. Yes. I suppose I would expend my last days taking revenge on the universe for continuing to exist after the Doctor was gone. I would destroy all of matter, all of creation, because she was not there to bear witness to it, and therefore, it no longer had the right. Because it … !”

He ducks his head, grinds his jaw, and gasps something resembling a mangled laugh.

“It failed her. It FAILED her. WE failed her. I would kill the universe and then I would cannibalize myself because nothing deserves to exist if that light is already extinguished.”