Send Try + a muse that you want to see me write! (accepting)
In the scope of the 16 billion or so years that he has existed as a discrete consciousness, the Morningstar has never found a more pitiable mortal life form than the human race. Never.
He muses upon this fact as he sits, chin on hand, in broad daylight, at a bench outside a Walmart parking lot. Yes, oh yes. The absolute dregs of human society populate here: “ordinary” people.
People parking in handicapped spaces without placards. People shouting at actual handicapped people who “don’t look it.” People trying to return used goods because they broke them, passing them off as new. Muggings, pick-pocketings, and the thieves aren’t even the filth of that scenario, it’s the red-faced middle-aged rich guys who scream “don’t ram your cart into my Beemer!’ The occasional Salvation Army bellringer, oho, those are the best of false messiahs yet. No homo!
People are disgusting. And Lucifer’s sole remaining consolation in all the universe, jilted from Heaven by a Father he loved too covetously, is the roiling nausea in his gut and the ache in his grinding jaw when he thinks too long on how disgusting life is.
“Get a job,” a woman with a soccer mom haircut snaps at the Devil, as she slap-slaps past in her flip flops.
Eyes the hue of a desolate winter sky follow her receding form through the automatic doors. Lucifer considers spontaneous disembowelment, but then shrugs, and the cold fury ripples off his form, replaced with a sinuous sneer. He doesn’t wanna lose his front-row seat, after all.
It’s funny. The Lightbringer is painted as a putrid rotting corpse, crawling with maggots and boils and burns and leprous holes, six bruised and torn wings once white as virgin snow now reeking of rotting roses, towering, a jowly beast of a fallen Archangel, and it’s true, on a supercorporeal level, that is the best way to describe Lucifer. But he chokes not with broiling fire. Not with dramatic horrific displays. Nah. Lucifer chokes with ice. He chokes with words never said. Jealousies that fester for years and centuries. Misapprehensions and miscommunications and resentments that turn into bitter entitlements. Lucifer is xenophobia, and envy, and foregone accountability. Lucifer is the simplest of concepts, really: he’s the absence of compassion. And these things are all soooo quietly insidious. They never make a fanfare, for all the talk that he is the embodiment of Pride (which he is).
And he RELISHES that humans will forever misperceive him as a red skinned imp with a forked tail. Or better yet, as a snake: an innocent legless lizard. Jesus, it’s hilarious!
The most. Pathetic. Creatures. In. The. Cosmos.
And thinking about that? It drowns out the endless keening wailing of a thing abandoned and past hope: with no one but himself to blame. It freezes that noise over. Just a little longer.
I think of the Master as a character who was emotionally permeable in childhood. All his psychic powers allowed him to feel others’ feelings and know others’ thoughts, but this knowledge came at a cost. He was so susceptible to others’ thoughts and feelings that he didn’t know his own. He never grew up with the peace and quiet and privacy of his own thoughts; he has only attained mental impregnability later, at great cost.
He names himself the Master because he has struggled for self-mastery all his life. For him, self-mastery means making others submit to his will because then there will be no foreign thoughts violating his mind. There will only be his, and he will finally have certainty, calm, and peace.
I have two observations about the Master’s use of power. First, he always tries to get power by controlling people who will then confer great power upon him.
Second, it’s always a shortcut. I mean, have we ever seen him build up power by legitimately cultivating loyalty? No, it’s all shortcuts based on magic and fear.
His view of “power = controlling others” makes sense if he’s trying to make them SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP so that he can have the mental peace and quiet he’s always craved; Also his chronic use of shortcuts also makes sense if he’s trying to make everyone else SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP as quickly as possible.
Finally, the Master seems to have two settings: INTENSE and…off. This concept of relationships as unilateral control goes along with his fire-hose personality. I really doubt he has any experience with mutual relationships.
So his constant attempts at shortcuts and control as means to power do not make logical sense because he keeps making the same damn mistakes again and again. But they make all the emotional and characterological sense in the world.
I still, however, reserve the right to scream at him for his stubborn wrongheadedness. >:p What a dingus he is.
Thank you for articulating this in ways I have been unable!
I feel that this is what makes him so incredibly hostile later in life to the Doctor’s return to his social orbit. As children they were so emotionally enmeshed that when the Doctor left, this caused him almost insurmountable psychological and affective distress. And now because of all the effort it’s taken to obtain what you call “self-mastery,” –and God, I love you reasoning for his moniker, it’s similar to my own but somehow better articulated–he (wrongly?) equates allowing the Doctor to resume friendship (or more) with him with a breech in his emotional (and psychological) impermeability, and, by extension, a dangerous state of vulnerability akin to that of his childhood.
So he reacts, he overcompensates, with extreme antagonism, with rage and hatred, to try and mute his longing for that regained connection.
Which is why they are essentially “best enemies,” to coin a popular DW fandom term.
It’s tempting to characterize what you’re talking about as symptomatic of Borderline Personality Disorder, but that’s always tricky and has ableist pitfalls, but what you describe as “intense or off” is connected to an unstable sense of self versus other.
“His view of “power = controlling others” makes sense if he’s trying to make them SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP so that he can have the mental peace and quiet he’s always craved; Also his chronic use of shortcuts also makes sense if he’s trying to make everyone else SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP as quickly as possible.“ <–this I’ve already covered in trying to explain to other people why exactly the Drums are more than just “a noise that made him cray cray.”
And I guess he’s a dingus but. If I cease to feel sympathy and compassion for him then I’ll cease to be able to write him adequately.
//It’s funny because I’ve had people who are nd approach me before about how I write Koschei’s canonical tendency to get overwhelmed and overstimulated as specifically a facet of being nd, and thanked me for it and how they could relate to it, and it’s a huge honor to hear, because if I am nd myself then it’s only margically with some pretty bad PTSD, but honestly? What I base it on in my own life? Is twofold:
A) Chronic illness and B) the migraines that I have daily, that every neurologist has told me I basically have to just live with, because they’ve tried every fucking prophylactic med and procedure including the botox shots and I still get them. And they make everything too much. Too bright too coarse too loud too strong smelling too MUCH.
This is actually exactly why I was drawn to Simm’s Master over any other Master, even Missy, who is also fabulous, because of all the Masters, Simm’s is the LEAST in control of himself and specifically in the sense of just being constantly overstimulated and bewildered and angry about it.
Anyway he needs the hugs even if he won’t admit it lmao ❤ And I give you hugs too for your hardships bestie.
Someone else pointed this out I think but I will never not laugh hysterically at how gracefully Simm!Master falls, like his very last thought before the oblivion of unconsciousness seizes him is “GOTTA LOOK COOL PASSING OUT” fdfghdfghjksdfg my dumbass child.
“Well, I mean, all of that too, butthat’s not what I have to show you this time. Come here,” he says, taking his hand and pulling him into one of the lesser visited rooms of the TARDIS. There’s a large marble sculpture there, one that on first glance seems to be Rodin’s The Kiss, but as Koschei comes closer, he’ll see that it’s been restyled to represent two male figures – complete with theirfaces too.
“I thought about a small little token, but then I thought, ostentatious is much more our style.”
Koschei laughs. He throws his head back and laughs so hard that tears gather in his eyes and spill out the corners. He smacks his thighs and bends at the waist.
“PLEASE tell me I’m actually seeing an exact replica of Rodin’s The Kiss with OUR FACES on the models!”
He pauses, and leaps into Jack’s arms confident that he’ll catch him, smacking his palms on his cheeks for ultimate, undivided focus.
“OR DID YOU GO BACK IN TIME AND CHANGE IT SO WE’RE ON THE ORIGINAL?”
“Darling, please,” he says, lips pursed as he gives his husband, secured in his arms, a look. “Do you think I would half ass something like this? Now come on, we have a sculptor to sit for. And by sit, I mean make out in front of.”
((This is the funniest fucking thing I have ever seen I LOVE IT OF COURSE JACK AND KOSCHEI WOULD ALTER THE GREAT ART OF CIVILIZATION FOR SUCH A VAIN SELF INDULGENT REASON LMFAO. Maybe next time they should go back to Egypt and change some Pharaoh faces lkjhsdf))
Okay if you’re not already following A, you’re seriously missing out folks.
You. YOU. You, my darling friend, know exactly what I’m about to say- but I’m going to say it anyway because it needs saying. Your writing is beautiful, and I am eternally envious of the way you’re able to turn words into poetry. You’re not just a fabulous writer but you’re also a strong, gorgeous person, inside and out, and I count myself lucky to know you, friend.
You inspire me.
You’re the first Master I interacted with on this or any other blog I’ve had in the past. You’re the reason my Ten is who he is, complex and growing, changing, learning, not being such an idiot. You’re the reason my Thirteen even came into being and found her voice in the first place. You’re the reason Thoschei is one of my OTPs now. You just. You’re amazing, okay, and I send you ALL THE HEARTS in return.
I’ll forever bestunned [and grateful] that you think so highly of me and my writing, and that you were willing to write with me in the first place. You give the Master so much depth, so much spirit and emotion and soul. You make him more than what he was on the show, in the audios, in the books and comics/graphic novels. We’re always saying how the Master deserved better… well, YOU give him that. You give the Master the proper beginnings [not endings] he deserves, the redemption he needs, and the life that he should have had all along.
I’m going to shut up now because I could honestly go on for days, but I will say one more thing:
Thank you for sharing your talent, art, and yourself with all of us on Tumblr. You make this place brighter.
Icarus 