A place for Whovian ramblings

[gallifreyrises]

Getting a handle on this Tumblr thing. The blog is for writing utter shite about Doctor Who, mostly, and occasionally for plugging my fiction writing, which is hopefully not shite.

Doctor Who fics:

Long scary novel about broken TARDISes:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63713713/chapters/163389127

WIP, a follow up to above novel. I'm adding chapters as I develop them, not how I usually write, but it sort of happened this way.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65236021/chapters/167815612

Short story that started life as something else:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/68184016

Another short Twelve fic:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

And now for Classic Who. Four and Sarah have an adventure:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Original published novels:

This is about horses, veterinarians, wild places, and mental health. Think Black Beauty meets an Irvine Welsh novel:

https://amzn.eu/d/dtE2NeP

This one is about miscarriages of justice in New York City (I beat you to it, 'Criminal Record,' but if you liked that, you'll like my book):

https://amzn.eu/d/b2Qh0JM

This is about a New York police detective with PTSD, a prequal to 'Overturned,' the above one.

https://amzn.eu/d/a2m3MWf

[gallifreyrises]

You get some good life advice via Doctor Who.

Nevernor: the right answer is not giving any fucks.

Kill the Moon: sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose.

That covers all bases, I think.

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

What if. Romana, unlike the Doctor, remembered from school how to induce a controlled regeneration, explaining that ridiculous scene, but she was still young and arrogant and didn't think doing it without any prep or like in a zero room would be a big deal so still crashes after that episode?

[gallifreyrises]

I first watched that episode straight after or right before (re)watching Twice Upon a Time, and my only thought was, "Huh." On one hand, we have Twelve having a massive flap about regenerating, and when he eventually sucks it and regenerates, he blows the TARDIS out of the sky. On the other hand, we have Romana, casually sauntering into the console room and asking Four, "Does this one make my butt look big?" And Four somewhere between baffled and not giving a shit.

Reasons were given in the Gallifrey series, of course, but I did not come across that until much, much later.

[gallifreyrises]

I've discovered the best video on the entire internet.

[ghostisredacted]

just saw someone say "a fandom is small, so like only 1-3 fics posted per day" . you wouldnt survive a day in the place where im from

[phoenixqueenwrites]

hahaha

@nathaylee, @ghost-bison, @addiemilfgomery, @basmathgirl @love-in-the-time @a-rapunzel

Also @melscarrotjuice and @gallifreyrises cause I you classic who peeps almost never gets new fics.

I'm sure, I missed some people. I'm really bad at remembering psueds and usernames.

Tag, if I missed someone please tag them :)

[gallifreyrises]

I tend to do specific word searches of AO3 anyway, but it’s writing for a small fandom that does your head in. No “ships” or wild sex, even smaller! You feel like you’re screaming into a void even if you work your arse off on these things.

[gallifreyrises]

“Whatever blows can be sucked.”

Ooh, er, matron!

[gallifreyrises]

As a corollary to last night's 3am ramblings, there should be more stories like 'The Face of Evil' where the Doctor goes back to places like Pluto where he started a proletarian revolution to see how they are getting on.

He'd probably find another authoritarian society with different arseholes in charge.

Hell, his own planet is hardly the paradigm of liberalism. LOL.

[gallifreyrises]

If you think about it, Classic Who presents a very dark vision of humanity. Almost every time the Doctor flies to a planet in the far future and finds colonists or their descendants (sometimes they include other random-ass aliens), it turns out that they've developed their own society on said planet, and it's invariably an autocracy or oligarchy, with an authoritarian upper class who have absolute power, violently oppressing and exploiting a proletarian/slave class.

In other words, once a colony ship lands somewhere, everyone goes all Lord of the Flies.

[mist-fire]

Tagged by @camellcat to share my wip titles, of which I have many, but alas I fear most of them aren't actually titled oops. still, here we go:

for all the love I never got to give (thirteenrose, what I've affectionately dubbed my grief fic despite it being a club fic)

Daemon AU (timepetals, and a daemon au yup that's it)

Belle/Rose (explicit selfcest fic I'll finish one day)

elevenrose???? (reunionfic, finished, waiting for editing)

the dynamic is so fucked up I'm trying to eat it (meredith/addison a grey's anatomy fic despite never having watched the show)

gala thing am I ever going to finish this? (thirteenrose why did I even start this one?)

my extremely daft and not well thought out DW and Broadchurch crossover (bethrose my beloved you are so long and I adore you)

jackie character study (self explanatory I hope)

nine turns into thirteen (what am I even doing anymore. probably not going to finish this one)

the -tober (thirteenrose kinktober fic that's multiple years late to being finished oops)

thirteen dress drabble (thirteenrose ofc. probably not finishing)

And then not really with anything written but existing ever presently in my mind are:

beloved cam's gift fic (explicit ninerose I WILL WRITE THIS I SWEAR)

ten and sixteen fuck shit and each other up (explicit tensixteen bc they could be so BAD)

So. Uh. Turns out I only have one wip that has a genuine title and everything else gets funky with it.

Okayyyyyyy tagging these people and anyone else who wants to do it: @tablox @freckles-a-constellation @eventhorizon0556

[freckles-a-constellation]

ahhhh those all sound so good! mine under the cut

I have a fuckload of wips so I'll only be listing ones that I more or less recently worked on, have something solid for and care about. Also most of this will be song lyrics lol

Doctor Who:

let everybody know (you're coming back for me) [Doctor/Rose, the Doctor keeps seeing the words Bad Wolf, eventual reunion]

come find me [Ten/Rose, musician au + soulmate au, the Doctor being hopeless af, I have like 2k words of it but it's a right mess]

it's hard to know that you still care [TenToo/Rose, them coming to terms with eachother, planned out for 4 chapters but fighting me]

hold me down until I'm fine [Ten&Martha, canon complaiant Smith and Jones fic]

the Doctor had a shred of communication skills [Ten~Martha, them having an actual conversation post-42. I'll figure out something better to call it... eventually]

things are better if I stay [Ten&Martha, wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey]

character analysis of the Time Lord Victorious [dunno what to call this one but it's what it says on the tin]

would you let me, baby, lose on losing dogs [Ten&Martha, Martha sees her favourite ice-skating performance live and the Doctor is an angst lord]

you don't mean nothing at all to me [Doctor/Martha, 5+1 things, multiple incarnations]

stubborn companion [10/Reader, post-JE, someone sneaks into the TARDIS despite the Doctor's instance that he doesn't need a companion]

Girl from Mars [fem!Ten/Donna]

try now we can only lose (and our love become a funeral pyre) [14/Simm!Master]

nothing to pray to you know [Doctor/Rose, Bad Wolf is like legit a goddess and the Doctor is a guilty mess]

Non-DW:

and we'll make our escape [Broadchurch, transfemme!Hardy/Tess, their marriage is failing and they accidentally fall in love with eachother on an anonymous support forum for closeted queer people (Tess is bi)]

sleeping dogs lie (at your feet) [The Bridge, Saga Norén/Alice Sabroe]

all I do is for you (Night Agent, Diane/Michelle)

can't say what it means [Helluva Boss, Blitzø/Stolas, canon divergence in which Blitzø visits Stolas in the hospital post Western Energy]

tagging: @brere-bush @flamesandpages @phoenixqueenwrites

[phoenixqueenwrites]

First, I am so flattered that you would tag me, @freckles-a-constellation Thank you so much!

Alright, this is WIPs right? OH BOY

We're going to start with non-Doctor Who

The Destiny We Choose- Dragon Age fic that novelizes Dragon Age Inquisition written from the perspective of my Inquisitor. Started it 11 years ago and I do intend to someday finish it.

Seventeen Foot Lowtown Tallship- Another Dragon Age fic that... it started out as a throwaway crack story in which, during Hawke's time as Champion of Kirkwall someone lists a ship for sale that is supposedly owned by Varric. So Varric spends an irritating several months being hounded by various people who "want to buy the ship" or just "didn't know he had a ship" or "didn't take him for the seafaring type." This was a fireside story told in the previously listed WIP but accidentally became a fully fledged outline that I would very much like to have the time to write into a very funny short story from Varric's perspective.

The Memory of Light- extremely angsty Rings of Power fic (don't judge) focusing on Galadriel's guilt, self-doubt, and self-reflection following her accidental betrayal of her people and Middle-Earth. As of the premiere of the second season is is extremely AU. I am honestly not sure I will ever finish it, but we'll see if that hyperfocus will come back to me with the new season this fall.

ANYWAY, given who tagged me, I'm guessing that there is some degree of curiosity about what Doctor Who Things I have cooking.

[Listed in Chronological order in my Doctor Who Timeline, not based on readiness for publication.]

Stitches in Time- (Ten and Donna) A sort of... Season 4, between the running type of a fic? Focuses on the friendship between the Doctor and Donna and how it grows over the course of the season. Loosely episode tag-y and the central plot of the who thing is a jumper. yep... Currently up to the penultimate chapter. Should be finished within the next couple of weeks.

The Precarious Art of Friendship- (Ten and Donna) (<- Nathaylee will tell you this designation is BS, but I stand by it... mostly.) Set post-Midnight. The Doctor and Donna decide to crash a harvest garden party on an agricultural world, for a total change of pace, but it both turns out to be a huge, upper crust political, aristocratic-type thing AND a murder mystery because seriously... The Doctor cannot go anywhere without something going tits up.

The Nile: A Treatise (working title)- (Ten and Donna or... something like that) I have no idea if this one will ever be posted publicly, but if you message me, I might send you a link once its finished. It's definitely not right now.

The Power Within- (Fourteen and Donna) The second installment of my AU series. Sequel to The Gift of Chance.

The Vanguard Code- (Fourteen and Donna) The third installment of my AU series. Sequel to The Power Within

The Ghosts of Nimrud- (Fourteen and Donna) The nth installment of my AU series.

The Soldier's Rest- (Fourteen and Donna and Wilf) sort of a side story for my AU series

The Onerous Task of Admitting Defeat- (Fourteen/Donna) not gonna try to tag this one friendship; it literally starts with them in bed together. XD As the tin implies, a fic about how the people in their lives find out they're together. utterly pointless, self-indulgent, but it was started initially because a good deal of my fics have been very heavy emotionally and I wanted a breather piece. Stitches sort of also filled this roll, though it has its moments too. Sequel to The Dangerous Act of Acknowledgement.

... and these are just the ones that have names.

I might be insane. I might also be writing an entire AU series of Doctor Who. I still haven't picked how many "episodes" but... yeaaahhh

Tagging @nathaylee @ghost-bison @gallifreyrises @vhen-harel @rinliner

No obligation to reblog or tag. I very often don't.

[gallifreyrises]

Cheers, @phoenixqueenwrites for the tag. Sure, I'll play.

I try not to have too many WIPs on the go because it annoys me. They also have working titles, because you have to call an MS Word doc something. I usually give things actual titles right before I publish them.

But this is where we are at.

'Oil Rig' - A mad timey wimey clusterfuck with the Fourth Doctor, Kate Stewart, Narvin from the 'Gallifrey' series, and more than one incarnation of the Master. I don't know what the fuck is going on, either, except it has very little to do with an oil rig.

'Assassins?' - A short and sweet thing about Narvin's thoughts after being summarily exiled from Gallifrey for a thing he'd refused to do in the first place. A follow up to the Big Finish episode 'Assassins.' You devote your whole career and lives to being staunchly and unflinchingly loyal to your planet's institutions, and you still find yourself running away in a bloody TARDIS. FFS.

'Pyramid' - Trying to figure out how we got from the Twelfth Doctor getting his sight back and not dying at the end of the 'Pyramid at the End of the World' to whatever the fuck he was doing on that prison ship at the beginning of 'Lie of the Land.' This one has got kind of stuck. Open to suggestions.

'Farewell to Gallifrey' - Ugh, this one pisses me off. Mostly because it's on AO3, and it should be deleted. Started off as an epilogue to 'Skye Lines,' the big Twelve novel, but I decided the novel was better off without it but couldn't bring myself to oubliette those words from the universe. Thought it could be a standalone story. No idea what that fucking was. Still don't have a vision for it. Should probably delete it.

[gallifreyrises]

Like every other cunt, I could post whatever thoughts I have about the recent Doctor Who news. Resignation, some degree of irrational sadness, disappointment, so balls-deep in Classic and EU stuff that it's hardly a flicker. Who knows (not me) and who cares (not you...the internet is so full of opinions).

Or I could just give you Skipinnish.

[daughterofheartshaven]

I just told @pertweefan1970 I had some thoughts about why some NuWho fans might not be interested in watching Classic Who even if they were upset about not having more NuWho in the immediate future. And I wanted this to be a post not a comment.

So. Classic Who and NuWho are the same show, yes, but they are also very different shows in how they were made, their pacing, and their tone, and I have personal experience with this because Classic Who is significantly more accessible for me to watch. For a variety of reasons, the way NuWho is made makes watching it inherently anxiety inducing to me (this is something it shares with basically all modern television - it's an overstimulation issue). So yes I've seen all of NuWho but that is because I have made Doctor Who my entire fucking life and am a completionist. I share this mostly to demonstrate how one person can interact with Classic Who and NuWho differently. For me, NuWho is overstimulating. I can very easily see Classic Who being understimulating for some people - they know that something of the format and pacing of Classic Who will not hold their attention. And I think that's valid! Sure, one could power through it, like I powered through NuWho, but would it be worth it to them? I think its fair if it wouldn't be.

And that's just one example. There are a lot of differences between the two eras of the show just because 60s television and 2000s television is very different. And I think it's reasonable for someone in the 2020s to not want to watch a show done in the style of tv from the sixties.

Does that make any sense?

[gallifreyrises]

All very astute points. After I had watched all of NuWho on iPlayer, some series more than once, I was curious about Classic Who but also a bit wary. If you are a millennial or younger, 1960s/70s TV production is going to seem weird to you, from the way they block scenes, camera angles, to the SFx, the soundtrack, the striking lack of diversity, everything. I can understand why a lot of people under the age of 50 wouldn't be interested. You have to go in with an open mind.

Luckily in the UK, it's all on iPlayer, so you can click a button to satisfy your curiosity with almost zero time/money investment. I started at 'Robot,' with the view that the mid-70s serials would feel a little more familiar to my millennial brain than the 60s/early 70s ones. I spent the first half of the very first one thinking, 'whoa, this is fucking weird,' then the second half of it falling hopelessly in love with the Fourth Doctor, at which point I no longer gave any shits about ropey special effects and the weirdness of 1970s scene blocking and post production. It didn't take long.

As an aside, the camera technology made a significant leap forward, coinciding with Tom's early serials. Film cameras became small and maneuverable enough to follow actors for more than a couple feet. You didn't have to film everything in a studio, with people only walking as far as the camera could pivot, and you could have long tracking shots of actors running across a boggy moorland in Dartmoor.

[gallifreyrises]

Narvin having a minor nervous breakdown in Transference and Ambition’s Debt is cute. He can take a fucking number and get in the queue.

[mouse-doubleo100]

harry sullivans terrible, no good day:

9:00 am: clock into work after a stressful few days of dealing with a giant robot and also a crazy man who stuffed me into a cupboard

9:05: investigate mysterious box.

9:10: i am in space. almost killed sarah jane. almost got killed. lost my shoe :(

9:15: sarah jane has gone missing

9:30: found sarah jane. shes in a coma :(

9:45: sarah janes no longer in a coma :)

10:00: attacked by bugs

10:15: attacked by bugs

10:30: bugs dead. doctor is quickly popping down to earth to fix transmat. pop down with him

10:40: in a hole :(

10:50: out of hole :) sarah jane has been kidnapped :(

11:00: attacked by potato. sarah jane is free :)

11:10: attacked by potato

11:20: blow up spaceship. finally time to go home :)

11:25: aw man what the fuck

11:30: in the trenches

11:40: nazi prisoner :( sarah jane is maybe dead (unclear) :(

12:00: escaped prison. foot almost bitten off by big clam :(

12:30: sarah jane is alive :)

12:45: witness genocide :(

13:00: nazi prisoner. doctor decides to kill nazis :)

13:05: the doctor is no longer killing nazis :(

13:30: nazis are all dead :) new, eviler robot nazis have been born :( finally time to go home :)

13:35: goddamnit.

13:45: the plague

14:00: sarah jane has the plague :(

14:10: sarah jane no longer has plague :) went to alien planet and found gold :)

14:15: in prison :(

14:30: no longer in prison :) sent sarah jane back to ship to help the doctor

14:35: dropped rocks on the doctor. nearly blew up the doctor. sarah jane has been captured :(

15:00: the doctor has saved sarah jane :) finally time to go home?

15:05: in scotland.

15:10: got shot :(

15:20: got kidnapped :(

15:30: met suction cup aliens. met loch ness monster. replaced by suction cup alien

15:50: sarah jane frees me :)

16:00: escape suction cup aliens ship

16:20: loch ness monster in london. jesus christ.

16:30: go home :)

[irrationalplanets]

the Torvandred plot line is still one of the most fascinating bits of Gallifrey world building they’ve ever done purely with how much it doesn’t explain

[irrationalplanets]

the idea that you could successfully commit identity fraud on a planet where people regularly change their entire bodies AND have their entire mishmash of DNA and temporal history stored in government archives AND are under constant surveillance by the largest database in the universe which can somewhat reliably predict the future (and could arguably be a bit sentient with all the time lord brains in it) with nothing but a hot glue gun and a dead guy’s clothes is WACK

and yet it says so much about time lords

[gallifreyrises]

Watching Rivals at the same time as Trial of a Time Lord is entertaining. The Master said that the Valeyard was an incarnation of the Doctor's dark side, but I wasn't seeing it. He was just some tight-arse jobsworth of a prosecutor. None of that is 'Doctory,' of course, but I didn't register it as the Doctor's 'dark side,' either. It's not him at all. Not Six nor any previous incarnation. And it's not like this Time Lord is a raging egomaniac with plenty of weird shit to exploit.... They just didn't bother their arses spinning out all the worst traits of the Doctor (and Six! he's not short of them!) into a living, breathing person. Rather, they wrote the Valeyard as a tropey bad-guy prosecutor. So what?

However.... Tony Baddingham....it's like David Tennant found every dank, fucked-up shadow and crevasse in the Tenth Doctor's psyche and then amplified it to 11.

Tony for Valeyard? I'm putting the signs on my lawn.

[gatesofminrathous]

there will never be anything as funny as the mutual disbelief between long form and short form fic writers about each other's style.

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.

meanwhile long form writers look at people writing 1000 word one shots like god I would cut off my left nipple to be able to say anything concisely. i would love to play with multiple ideas. free me from the shackles of this child I have birthed. i love them but I now must take them to t-ball and doctor's appointments and they're going to destroy everything I own.

[gallifreyrises]

As someone who cans quite short form fiction for love nor money, this sums it up perfectly.

[gallifreyrises]

Trial of a Time Lord Pt 14: I think I need whatever they are supposed to be taking.

Why does the Matrix look like Victorian London? Why would Gallifrey give two flying fucks about Victorian London? What happened off-screen on Gallifrey? The Doctor suggesting Darkel run for Lord President....mate, you have no idea. Is the Master still stuck in the Matrix? With the Valeyard? How romantic. No, wait, the Valeyard is the chap with the key? Still no idea where Mel came from. Still no idea where the Valeyard came from. Peri is a warrior queen somewhere. Cool?