Where All Ladders Start

I’m Shift, my pronouns are your best guess. Currently beholding Gallifrey

[shiftofgallifrey]

Thinking about doctor who and contorting myself into shapes unknown to science

[daughterofheartshaven]

*bites you*

Yes hi hello ow why is everyone biting me??

[lerios]

because its biting heartshaven day 🥰 get appreciated <3

[ouevreofmaite]

♱ Carmilla & Laura ♱ illustrated by me

[valtsv]

forget age gaps or differences in rank or whatever the most potently dangerous power dynamic in any relationship is "people like you more than me"

[valtsv]

genuinely nothing is more corrosive to love, respect, or trust than the insecurity of forever being second and last in line. of always being the plus one but never invited; always tolerated on their behalf but never wanted on your own. of knowing that nobody's jealousy or admiration is about you at all, only your place at their side. you tell them that you feel like you only exist when you're with them, and they laugh, charmed, but it isn't a figure of speech. it's not enough that they love you best if everyone else loves them better.

[valtsv]

okay some people are misinterpreting this as talking about people who treat you like a pity project and like they're doing you a favour by choosing you. this isn't necessarily about relationships made toxic by people who don't value you enough. this is about knowing that you're socially disposable and being unable to accept the love that you're offered because you resent how much your life depends on it.

[goldensunset]

joining the war on obvious and heavy-handed symbolism on the side of the obvious and heavy-handed symbolism

[goldensunset]

oh waiterrrrrrrr more characters with painfully on-the-nose names and designs!!!!!

[shiftofgallifrey]

Does everyone pressing the shift key add up to a hug

[lerios]

hmm. i tried but the computre hates us. please advise???

[shiftofgallifrey]

Make a custom shortcut so shift+shift+shift opens tumblr.com

[daughterofheartshaven]

#shift+shift+shift is how to summon me and ctrl+shift+shift+shift is how you make sure I can’t leave the salt circle when you do

welp you're stuck on my computer for the time being get hugged

[daughterofheartshaven]

also getting that sticky keys popup happens annoyingly fast. Fuck off sticky keys i'm trying to give my friend a hug

[shiftofgallifrey]

chapter seventeen of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

[heimeldat]

Beware the old wolf... whatever she may have lost in strength, she makes up for in cunning.

[deeplovelydark]

time lords' schrödinger's misogyny. it doesn't make sense and yet it makes perfect sense. it doesn't exist when it's more interesting that way and it does exist when it's more interesting the other way. just like everything in doctor who

[deeplovelydark]

these tags by @thenugking got me thinking that when we talk about time lords and transness the first thing that comes to mind is the physical change brought on by regeneration, which out-of-universe means that the role of a character previously portrayed by a cis actor is taken over by a cis actress or vice versa. the audience perception of the character switches from one binary gender to another. from the doylist perspective the implicit transness of this situation is kind of incidental. I'm not saying that the writers have never flirted with the idea of time lords as an inherently transgender species in the text, but it was only that–a mere flirtation.

so, are time lords trans? well, at best they are a trans allegory. not that trans allegories are bad–up to a certain point the closer a character was to being 'actually' trans, the more likely they were to be cast in the same mold as the silence of the lambs, dressed to kill and psycho's trans (?) characters. while characters who could be seen as trans through metaphor and allegory could be sympathetic and complex. but my point is that time lord regeneration cannot be truly trans. because in actuality they go from being cis to being cis. they're not breaking any gender norms or rejecting their agab (agar? assignment gender at regeneration?) or anything like that. in fact, changing their pronouns and presentation upon regeneration IS gender conformity relative to the gallifreyan gender/sex binary. so, what would being actually trans entail for a time lord? well, as thenugking suggests, not changing one's pronouns and gender presentation upon regeneration. or being non-binary and refusing to label onerself as either one of the binary genders, no matter what body they're in. or experiencing disphoria. or receiving gender-affirming care. the same things that make us, humans, trans.

and sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally at times diagetically and at times exegetically the doctor IS trans & non-binary by time lord standards (which are the same as human standards once we look past the sci-fi alien element of regeneration). except when they're not and they're written as a cis man and behave like a cis man from planet earth. but, just like everything in doctor who, it can be both true and false at the same time.

[alyona11]

War Room I: The First Days of Phaidon animatic!

And it’s finally done! It took me about a month to finish (I think? I started it at some point, then I forgot about it, then remembered again) and for the past couple of weeks this was all I was doing art-wise after work. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!

@fiotrethewey ‘s The First Days of Phaidon is one of my fave audios featuring Leela and Narvin and planning their acting in this scene was very entertaining. It’s so surreal to watch the final result :3

Also I got to test ToonSquid and Procreate Dreams along the way so maybe I can give you some impressions if you’re interested 🤔

I would also appreciate it so much if you take 1,5 minutes of your time and watch it and if you enjoyed it like/comment/share it. The fandom is really small and algorithms hate videos making it REALLY hard to get responses for a pretty exhausting work that goes along with making a big project. Your support means a lot to me and also gives my demotivated brain a carrot to motivate it to do more stuff like this :3

[shiftofgallifrey]

I respect your expertise in this matter only because I happen to agree with you

[magicofthepen]

Thinking about how Romana still calls Sartia a friend after Sartia verbally abuses her and leaves her to die and psychically torments her and vs. how allergic Romana is to calling anyone a friend in the Gallifrey audios and how maybe…..those two things are somewhat connected…..

Also thinking about how Sartia keeps telling Romana that she’s as boring and stuffy and pathetic as the rest of the Time Lords vs. the Doctor’s last conversation with Romana in Zagreus when he tells her she’ll inevitably end up as corrupt as the rest of the Time Lords……obviously Sartia’s terrible, while the Doctor was actually a genuinely good friend of Romana’s, but the parallel between the Doctor implying to Romana that he never wants to see her again and Sartia being all ‘obviously no one Actually wants to be around you’…….yes I do think that left her with some Issues around friendship by the time the Gallifrey audios begin!

And following up on that…..isn’t it interesting how much Romana emotionally spirals when Leela is angry with her. (I can think of multiple examples, but probably the most egregious is Unity: Leela is bitter and angry and says she wishes Romana would have stayed away……and it isn’t very long after that that Romana goes ‘hey so I’ve decided to stay and die here because that’s what I deserve isn’t it?’) Which, to be clear, is not Leela’s fault and Leela’s going through her own rough emotions in that episode. But Romana’s very very high sensitivity to rejection from her best friend (to the point of self-destructive behavior) does feel vaguely connected to that history of being told that she’s awful and should die by the person she considered her oldest friend (and how much she internalized that self-hatred).

This is kind of ramble-y but I think there is Something here about how Romana lets Sartia’s opinion of her shape her own self-worth, and how later in life she’s still prone to attaching her self-worth to whether or not Leela likes her……obviously the situations are wildly different because Sartia’s actively trying to hurt Romana’s self-worth and Leela’s definitely not…..but there does seem to be an unhealthy pattern of depending too much on validation from a specific person and spiraling when that validation isn’t there (which actually makes it harder for Romana to self-reflect in a productive way and work on improving her friendship with Leela).

[magicofthepen]

And now I’m thinking about when Brax comes back in Enemy Lines and Narvin’s concerned about how easily Romana goes back to confiding in and leaning on him. Brax is hiding so much information about where he’s been, he has a history of manipulating people into what he thinks is best for them, why is Romana falling back into trusting him so easily? But Romana’s relationship with Brax feels a bit like the nicer version of her relationship with Sartia. Brax wants to protect her, and Sartia wants to hurt her, but the cycle of Brax manipulating Romana and/or lying to her and her being hurt but still inevitably going back to putting her trust in him (….and then getting hurt again….) also makes a lot of sense after hearing how Romana is clearly still attached to Sartia (says she was worried about her, makes excuses for her, calls her a friend) post-actual murder attempt. If she’s willing to make excuses for everything Sartia did because Sartia was nice to her at some point…….yeah, her wanting to trust Brax even if she knows she shouldn’t makes even more sense.  

But also yikes the Sartia-context adds a whole new layer to Romana’s reaction in Series 3 when Brax seemingly betrays her (of course friends are people who stab her in the back……).

[magicofthepen]

Okay okay one more thought: I feel like I’m slowly making an argument for why Romana’s friendship with Narvin is actually the best for her emotionally? Since Romana and Narvin start out in “I can’t stand you” mode, she’s used to arguing with him and being criticized by him and not taking it deeply personally in a self-destructive way…..so this kind of leads to a more emotionally stable foundation for their friendship, weirdly??

I’m not sure if I’ve fully thought this through, but there’s Something there about the long, painstaking process of trust with these two (vs. Romana becoming very emotionally attached to Leela very quickly) and how it means that Romana can grow to value his opinions without internalizing them in ways that spiral out of control? 

I mean, it’s hard to make a strong claim that Romana doesn’t spiral in the same way when Narvin’s angry with her because we simply don’t see the aftermath of one of the biggest examples of that. (I’m talking about the emotional gap between The Devil You Know and Desperate Measures where they go from “Narvin’s angry and upset, Romana’s guilty and upset, everything’s very emotionally rough” to “things seem to have been worked out, they’re a really good team”…….and we don’t actually see that process of forgiveness? @Big Finish why)

But I feel like Time War 2 + 3 still show a lot of the “we can disagree and get angry and frustrated with each other, but we’re able to talk about it and work through things in a mature, productive way” (which, I’m so proud of them). And idk maybe there’s something here about how their relationship started off so ugly and took so long to build into something good that Romana has no reason to be afraid of Narvin secretly hating her? Hmm I want to think on this more….

[official-gallifrey-posts]

Official Gallifrey Post

[magicofthepen]

Romana’s level of Pining in Emancipation (5.1) is truly incredible…her audible deflation when Leela is cool and distant, the super earnest way she says “how are you?,” the pure yearning of “I have lost a great deal. I have lost you”…like oh my god every time Leela is in the room she has no chill whatsoever, it’s so much!!

[ariesrin]

I love characters who would die for each other but will not, under any circumstances, communicate a single honest feeling.

[icarianstars]

As promised, vampire (leela)romana

[magicofthepen]

do you ever think about how “awkwardly standing there while another version of herself blatantly flirts with her friend(s)” is something that has happened to romana twice

[raccoonmilf]

using R is like "haha i am a fucking wizard, I am the smartest person on the planet. look at me. Quantifying alcohol use in raccoons. I am peak brilliance" instantly to "I am going to do another 9/11"