//anyway hot take but people sure vilify the master/missy a lot for simply wanting to do things autonomously without being under the control of a foreign agent or will and acting violently when their control of self is once again threatened, whereas the doctor has BEEN that outside malevolent control to others on more than one occasion and under the convenient masquerade of moral rectitude.
Super Important PSA
I just want to make something super clear. ThirteenXSimm is my Thoschei otp but not once has it occurred to me that, because he is male-presenting and she is female-presenting, this should become a “good girl reforms bad boy story.” I DO NOT want that. If you want to do that, fine, go to. But that will NOT be the content of MY blog.
This is for several reasons:
The good girl saves bad boy trope is hackneyed and implicitly misogynistic.
Both the Master and the Doctor are genderfluid. Their notions of gender are not constrained by human concepts, including problematic concepts, of “roles” in relationships. I reject misogyny as a trait of the Master in the RTD and Moffat eras, save as a verbal weapon and series of human beliefs which he does not himself ascribe to, because it makes no sense.
From an outside-of-universe standpoint: this genderfluidity means they’ve never been a problematically mainstream “cis het” pairing and never will be.
I want the Master to save himself. Because at his core, he is a being who craves autonomy and control. He would want to rescue himself with the AID and GUIDANCE of a loved one (which is what I like to explore in my threads with Thirteens. He would not want to be spoon-fed salvation. Which is exactly why Missy in the Vault, moving though it was, resulted in tragedy.
The Doctor deserves better than to be someone’s moral nursemaid.
It would be boring.
//BRB I gotta check my other bagels but keeeep sending me stuff pls <33333 I’m lovin it!!!!!!!!!!
And yes, it is, but he stopped believing that. There’s only the drums now. Only war and bloodshed and a monster. What’s the point in fighting it when it’s inevitable?
Someone needs to show him that it’s worth the fight.
It’s actually FASCINATING to read your stuff, because your Master is exactly where mine was about an actual chronological year ago. Maybe longer actually. When I first started playing him, and on his bad days, he will still fall into one of these self-doubting ruts. Now he’s in a place of vastly sturdier self-esteem and emotional health. Things like trauma never have a “cure” but he’s comparably flourishing. And cheering on his counterpart from either an alternate timeline or the future. <333
Like everyone’s talking about how positive and lovely and wholesome she is and yeah that’s true to a point.
But there’s times when it feels so painfully forced, like she’s trying desperately to stay that way, and other times where you can see the cracks
Like… until someone yells at her she’s willing to jeopardize an entire ship full of hospital patients just to get her TARDIS back.
She not only sends Tim Shaw away with his body completely fucked up by those bombs, but she barely bats an eyelid when she finds out he didn’t end up where she wanted him to and she’d doomed him to torment; essentially causing him to become more of an ass. She’s almost pleased to find out how fucked up she left him.
The moment Graham sounds like he’s going to kill Tim she loads up on explosives and runs off to confront him alone, as if she’s willing to do what she’s done before and do everything possible to make sure Graham doesn’t do it – even if that means killing Tim Shaw herself.
Even when she finds out she could have unknowingly blown up an entire planet, she only lets it affect her for a second before she’s back to happy-go-lucky Doctor.
It’s clear at this point that her wholesome happy demeanour is at least partially a mask. There’s only so far that’s gonna go. And as someone who knows how hard it is to keep up that kind of attitude for so long, and someone who knows the consequences of it?
I’m a little terrified to see what happens if she does snap.
“The moment Graham sounds like he’s going to kill Tim she loads up on explosives and runs off to confront him alone, as if she’s willing to do what she’s done before and do everything possible to make sure Graham doesn’t do it – even if that means killing Tim Shaw herself.”
This kind of reminds me of the Tenth Doctor, though, where sometimes he would come off like a dick and it was because of good writing, but then sometimes he’d come off like a dick and it was because of bad writing. It’s all down to how it’s framed.
Like, I can’t tell if Thirteen is a little bit of a knight templar because they’re writing her as a complex, flawed character, or if they’re just trying to write her as a hero but without enough nuance or self-awareness to know how she’s coming off.
Thirteen makes a lot of dubious choices in the name of stringent moral rules like “Killing is always bad, no exceptions,” and “Guns are always bad, no exceptions.” But at no point are they framed like dubious choices. No one questions them and we don’t really see any negative consequences of them. And considering that, in most of Chibnall’s episodes, the nuance is usually pitched at the level of “pollution is BAD, mkay” it’s hard to feel like we’re supposed to view her actions as anything less than correct.
I would love it if we got to see the more sinister aspects of the character played up. But right now I’m not sure how much of what we’re seeing is intentional and how much is a consequence of tension between the complexity of the issues that the show is trying to tackle and the simplicity of the show’s morality.
Okay so I always come back to this one scene from ‘Rosa’:
When the Doctor smashes Krasko’s vortex manipulator,
And he starts to strangle her…
She’s smiling. The entire time.
She knows full well he can’t hurt her. Like he’s physically unable to. Yet she manipulated him and his emotions so she could show this off. She planned it down to a t.
You know what this reminds me of? VNA Seven. The really edgy and dark Doctor.
That’s what I find so interesting about Thirteen. I see a lot of darkness in her. It’s also what makes her so dangerous. People will see her as the happy-go-lucky Doctor, but she’s capable of some really messed up things.
That’s why I’m hoping for her to snap. It’d be really cool to see New Who give as that ‘Darker Doctor’ they promised with Twelve (who just ended up becoming that precious, punny dork). Like oh my god, please.
^^^ THIS.
I have been waiting for s11 to finish so i can binge it, and have been smiling on the sidelines, wondering when you all will realise that (from what i was noticing, at least) Thirteen is a dark Doctor hiding behing a happy-go-lucky mask.
Perhaps I pick up on this stuff more because MacQueen’s one of my favourite Masters, and he’s exactly the same: makes jokes, laughs a lot……..and will kill you in a heartsbeat. So I’m used to noticing this in characters.
//YAAAAAAAY it’s Goose it’s Goose!!!!!!! <333333333 Thank you :3
//OKAY I’m somewhat functional again today! Hello! ❤
The best part about every er visit is that it throws me back mental health wise several years and I’m me from 2007 again, the frightened animal who can’t even go into certain rooms or smell certain smells or see certain sights without panicking or dissociating.
Icarus 