Agreed. I think it’s a matter of preference for what people prefer to use as an identifier, but as a queer person that uses it interchangeably with other identifiers, I think it’s more than okay to use. Especially in the context you did, which was very obviously not using it as a slur.
The Master’s short-shorn untidy head rests against the side of the fresh-painted TARDIS. His hand is in his old friend’s hair, his fingers transferring signals of almost incomprehensible bliss to his brain.
She is here. She is his. And she is happy, because of him.
“You’ve strategically pinioned me here, under a hundred or more pounds of domestic bliss, in order to point this out in such a way that I can’t even be irritated by you bringing it up,” he accuses, with a shamelessly doting smirk.
“Thete, luv. Breathe. She came to me first, scared shitless you’d despise her for leaping into this. I tried to assure her otherwise.”
Here I am, the Master muses wryly, back in the role of the sane pragmatist. It’s like I never left.
“How could she possibly think I’d hate her?! She’s my DAUGHTER for Rassilon’s sake! I can’t say the same for that stupid BOY, though, the one– Koschei, it’s the same delinquent that had her in tears barely a week ago! I might kill him, I haven’t decided yet. Ophelia might get angry, but– ARGHH! Koschei, why the HELL didn’t you tell me!??”
“Oh please don’t start fighting over this because of who I told first. I didn’t want to cause this. I just… I found Koschei first and I’m sorry Dad that you weren’t the first to know, but I… you can’t go and kill him either. Neither of you can. He’s still the father and I might need him… won’t I?”
“Oh don’t pull that horse shit, Mister! I was literally on my way down the hall with medical results we took in the infirmary to surprise you with!”
Koschei bristles like an affronted peacock.
“She told me first because your opinion of her is the center of her universe, particularly right NOW, when she’s fresh from the Lungbarrow Shitshow and striking out on her own! And maybe she told me because I’m not her dad, but I happen to know as well as you what it’s like to be thought of as the family freak. Maybe–!”
Ophelia cuts in, meaning to diffuse tension, but in the process, makes it clear that … well, unlike assumptions and placations made earlier, she told Koschei for no good reason except that he was … just … there.
The cold stone in the pit of his gut–you don’t matter; you are circumstantial–is heavy.
But he reminds himself how childish it is to recenter attention from their frightened kid when she’s in a state of immediate crisis.
“Look, Hearts. I wanna kill him too. For saddling her with a massive lifelong duty. For hurting her at all. But she’s right, in that a child deserves a father, if at all possible, and in that this is her choice, her body, her baby, heridiot piece of shit sexual partner. Er, sorry, Button. Perhaps we … er, you … ought to speak to this boy. And remind him, for a boy he is, what it means to be a father. Sorta like you and I forgot what that meant, in his shoes.”
A million potential verbalizations of the Master’s abject shock flurry through his mind like a cognitive blizzard. He grasps the side of his chair, and sits down.
And stands.
And looks around.
And sits again.
“That’s. Highly. Significant! Well done! In the. Womb department! Does your father know? Shall I fetch the, ah, defibrillator now? You know, preemptively?”
Icarus 