The Master - Blog Posts

Another sketch from Magma 🤧

We could be beautiful.

Favourite ship dynamic: no one truly knows what exactly is going on between the two characters, including the characters themselves. But whatever it is, it's written in the fabric of the universe.

thinking about time lords and their fucked up little society again and i just realized how devastating the revelation of the drums in the end of time is in relation to the master's character.

because of all the renegade time lords in the universe, i think it's the master who most exemplifies the philosophical outlook that the time lords have towards the rest of the universe. they're stuffy observers, administrators, yes - but this position is one they've decided for themselves because of this concept of supremacy over other life forms. imposed and upheld this idea that other species that lack a time sense are less-than, primitive. and the master buys into this hard.

and i mean... compared to the doctor, the master is good at being a time lord. he buys into these supremacist concepts, this idea that every other species (and especially humans) is practically a meaningless ant in the grand scheme of the universe. takes it to the extreme, yes, but its the same underlying principle. he's a good student (despite whatever chibnall might think) - that one time lord from terror of the autons (identity forever a mystery) (its brax) even says "he did receive a higher degree of cosmic science than you." the master could play their game if he wanted to. he's remarkably comfortable with being on gallifrey/the idea of gallifrey(in eot/tlotl) than the doctor ever is. where the doctor avoids the subject of the lord presidency like the plague, the master is like "well if you kill the president you ARE the president! and then you have all of gallifrey!" and when the doctor destroys gallifrey (nominally), the master tries to rebuild it in the sound of drums/last of the time lords. tries to emulate their society. honor them in his little fucked up way. he brings them back from the time war!

and what does he get for it? how did the time lords treat him in response?

they decide to implant the sound of drums in his head, stretching back until he's a child. puts this insufferable noise, this splitting headache, in his head for his entire life. all so that they may live while he dies. because he is diseased, because of them. he has swallowed the pill, bought their propaganda, he has followed the rules, he tried to rebuild them he tried. and in response he is chewed up and spit out like trash so that rassilon's god complex can survive while the universe crumbles.

how crushing must that be to someone? to have your whole worldview - that you are better, you are chosen, you are special - come crumbling down in a few short moments? to see the revered founder-god of the civilization you have so desperately tried to revive look at you and say "you are diseased," even though he was the one to poison you in the first place?

and as his heart is torn to pieces... when rassilon says "no more," and charges his gauntlet, the master - who has spent countless lives fighting death with his bare hands - does not move.

part of me thinks he does not want to.

Normally I'm not into Human AUs, but this one definitely made me reconsider. A delicious take, intriguing and (unconventionally, thrown-off-balance but somehow still) perfectly in-character.

high school tensimm au except they’re both unbearable losers.

ten is a science geek that spends 23 hours a day in a laboratory, sucks at every subject that isn’t a scientific one but somehow manages to pass the classes, teachers and students hate him because he’s just always raising his hand to say shit and sometimes he doesn’t even do that, he just says stuff out loud when someone else is supposed to answer AND ITS NOT EVEN ALWAYS CORRECT. he chainsmokes cigarettes when he’s working, he wears glasses even though he doesn’t need them because he thinks they give him a hot look but he looks even more nerdy than before, he wears a suit to school and cmon who does that?! yet somehow all the girls seem to fall for him, at least to flirt and kiss him, just to get dumped after the first month of dating.

the master is just the rich petty kid you have in your class that somehow manages to get good grades even if he’s subtly insulting the teachers in their faces, there is no subject he’s not good at. he looks down on people for dressing badly (although he mostly wears a black sweatshirt to school too), he thinks his family name opens the door to everything in his life, he tries to do everything to get extra credits, he insults people who aren’t good at subjects he redeems as “easy”. he fucks people when he’s bored, he drinks alcohol right after school and calls it a “pre-party” for the evening, he likes the feeling of getting beat up, he has a thing for trying to make pathetic older men submit to him.

and together they just make the most insufferable couple. they spend a day literally sucking each other’s face off in class and then the next day they avoid each other like the plague - just to make out against a wall in the garden at the end of the school day both with a black eye and a few more scars. they skip classes together and fuck in the janitors closet, they smoke in the bathroom and blame other kids if the alarm goes off, the master sometimes puts ounces of vodka in the doctor’s water bottle so he microdoses for like two weeks before the master takes it off and leaves him feeling odd for a month, the master seems completely aware of the doctor’s past stories with other girls but makes comments that have people thinking he’s going to murder them soon, the doctor once went on a full hour rant at a party about how he is the only one the master will ever need and he’ll fix him up by curing him and making him a sane person with his infinite care (and then threw up on the ground). they’re just silly.

imagine: you get your memories back after years of amnesia to find out your whole species is dead and earth doesn’t exist anymore. that the only thing left of your culture is your weird ex and his busted honda civic that barely even works that he stole from the government when he was 13. And he’s been taking members of an alien species for trips in his honda civic and they’re all like “woah it’s so cool” and you get upset because it’s NOT COOL it’s a honda civic, the turn signals don’t even work “wow it can go up hills” yeah OF COURSE IT CAN GO UP HILLS EVERY CAR COULD DO THAT. but they’ve never seen a car before so everything it does is the coolest thing ever. And your ex’s only tool is a fucking screwdriver which is somehow also cool to this dumbass alien species even though it’s a fucking screwdriver so you just look like an idiot screaming about how none of this is even cool it’s actually really shitty but your whole planet is gone so you can’t even prove it but also you’ve had a constant drumming sounding in your head since you were 10 slowly driving you insane. I would become evil too.

Now we’ve had this bi-generation I just think we should go full unhinged and have gold tooth turn into Simm Master. Have a full ‘why has this face returned?’ parallel. Shove him into retired life with Tennant’s doctor. Scale down their enmity to absolutely microscopic proportions. From cosmic scale to just domestic life. Have the Nobles stuck in the front row watching them sort their shit out.

I want them trying to survive Sylvia Noble together. I want them at war with their neighbours. I want them battling with the chaos of Evri deliveries - ‘not even the TARDIS can locate the safe place they’ve apparently left it in’. Have them arguing in Tesco over whether it really matters whether eggs are free range. They can make up by getting their own chickens which The Master can regularly threaten to roast much to Rose’s horror (but he won’t because he named them after the Teletubbies and The Doctor knows he’d never hurt Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa or Po… and he just enjoys having dominion over lesser creatures or something 🙄)

I want aliens turning up for their regularly scheduled fuck with London at Christmas time moment only to be faced with the two of them in their matching Noble family Christmas jumpers (and they will be wearing them because have you met Donna?) And no, The Master hasn’t gone soft, he doesn’t care about Earth in general, but the Strictly final is on and he’s a little invested in that.

I want Donna, in her new UNIT job, explaining this to her new colleagues. Because they know The Doctor and The Master, they’ve seen the files, and they just…live in her garden now.

Part 5 the End of Time

Last special with the 10th doctor so here’s a silly one

when simm says ‘I don’t know what I’d be without that noise’ and ten says ‘I wonder what I’d be without you’ it makes me so insane because like

they’re both naming something that actively hurts them, that has fundamentally changed who they are and that has made them a darker, less controlled version of themselves. it has caused them so much pain and yet they’re terrified to be without it

for the master, there’s the drums and for the doctor, there’s the master

whatever the doctor and the master have going on is so much more complex than just “enemies-to-lovers” or even “friends-to-enemies-to-lovers” in the most deranged way possible. they’re friends, enemies, lovers, rivals, bitter exes, reluctant allies, arch-nemeses, and they’re constantly, rapidly oscillating between those things. usually they’re more than one of those things simultaneously. they’re lovers who regularly try to kill each other. they’re tentatively repairing their friendship but still can’t trust each other. they’re hatefucking. they’re searching in each other for a lost innocence they can never truly recover. they’re enemies with benefits. they’re each going scorched-earth to annihilate the other. they’re a disgrace to their species. they’re the last of their species. they both want to carve out the parts of themselves that resemble the other. they ran together through fields of red grass under the orange sky of their now-destroyed homeworld and made a pact to run away together to see every star in the universe. i just. do you understand.