i have a theory about why certain time lords regenerate with cosmetics: eye shadow, dyed/bleached hair, ear piercings, etc.
while the real world explanation is obvious, i love to canon-weld. here's my solution:
what if, hypothetically, what we call "regeneration" is actually a form of embodiment? what if regeneration is the selection of another person's body print from a semi-random point in time? if that person was wearing cosmetics, the Time Lord would get cosmetics. same thing for dyed hair, tattoos, scarification, piercings, etc.
this can be influenced, of course, intentionally (Romana) or unintentionally/subliminally (Twelve). but either way, regeneration could be a replication of another person's appearance.
this might explain why most Time Lords are humanoid, but can sometimes have non-humanoid bodies or traits - it's a bit of a bootstrap paradox. because Rassilon tried to wipe out most non-humanoid life forms, the pool of humanoids to regenerate into is much larger, and because Gallifreyans are mostly humanoid, Rassilon was racist/xenophobic towards non-humanoid aliens.
this might also explain why some Time Lords, including the Doctor, have such major personality changes after regeneration. the brain pattern of the original body probably transferred as well - and this effect might be stronger for the Doctor for any number of reasons. they always seem to have different hobbies and interests. though their core personality stays mostly consistent, the details always change.
maybe a small part of the original personality remains in some form, whether it's Commander Maxil's colorfully-plumed helmet "Ermintrude" and the Sixth Doctor's rainbow coat (and sass to match):
or Caecilius's curiosity and taste for decor:
or maybe not. but this theory is very fun because you could argue that the nature of the Doctor's character is that, well... they're a character. a role played by many different people. this is actually brought up in the show pretty often:
and in this case, the Doctor would be many different people that actually existed in-universe. the Doctor's core personality would shine through them like light through stained glass.
Me, suddenly feeling like a certain one of my fics is poorly written: I must go back and edit the whole thing!
Me, looking at the fic after reading back through it four times and literally only switching two words around, adjusting one line of dialogue, and maybe exchanging one word for a synonym: Yes, much better. Thank god I did that or it would have been horrible. I'm so embarrassed that anyone read this previous to the *obviously* important adjustments I just made.
Can people.... not use the c slur if they’re ablebodied, and... can people please not rb posts with the c slur used in a completely inappropriate context, and.... can people please tag the c slur when they do rb content with it,,,,
something i kinda wanted to say ever since i started exploring this fandom
im not going to bring up names and i dont want anyone in particular thinking this is me starting drama or bringing it up from the grave. im not calling anyone out in this post. this isnt directed at any one person in particular. this isnt a vague. its an observation abt, i suppose, a community. its just. i wish ppl would look into this because i feel like this is the reason i was genuinely uncomfortable with this fandom from day 1
so ive been involved in the corpse party fandom for not too long, altho i have looked into the tumblr tag and around the fandom some time before i started this blog. before i was here, i was in larger fandoms. think snk during its prime. (yes i know snk is bad and the fandom sucks but is corpse party really any better? other than being small enough to not annoy others)
anyway ive been in a lot of other fandoms since snk in fact thats kind of ancient history i left back in 2014 but im bringing it up now for the sake of comparison. particularly comparing large fandom to small fandom. i feel like its a perfect example because much like corpse party, it has a large ensemble cast of characters.
anyway back when i was in that fandom a long long time ago i had pretty much well adapted to the culture of large fandom. snk, much like corpse party, is a series with a large ensemble cast. there are lots of characters to focus on, and lots of different opportunities for ships. and because the fandom was so big, everyone was shipping all sorts of things. unfortunately the most popular ships were the really awful n anoying ones (u know which ones im talking abt) but even so, it was not impossible for me to find my own group in that fandom. a small group of friends with similar ships and opinions that we could all share with each other.
back in that fandom (particularly in the group i was in) multishipping was pretty much encouraged. after all there were a lot of opportunities with a big cast and that gave us a lot to work with. i had a lot of different ships, some rare n some not, and nearly all of them were gay. because the group i was in was mostly lgbt individuals, we liked to see ourselves in the characters as well. some of our headcanons didnt quite align. someone may have headcannoned a character as gay while another would say they were bi and so on.
it sure as fuck wasnt peaceful in that fandom. ill be the first to admit it was god fucking awful, but i can’t act like i dont have SOME fond memories for back then. i met a lot of cool people and made a lot of memories. it was fun. eventually my interest died and i moved on to other stuff.
one day i came back to corpse party. i had watched a lp of it a long long time ago but i decided to actually watch a playthrough of it again and u can guess what happened next. i was too embarrassed to post anything abt it on my blog tho, so i mostly stalked around the tumblr tags for a bit, never really liking or reblogging anything because i was pretty ashamed that this became a special interest. (i cant say i was in the healthiest state of mind during that time) after a while i noticed something kind of.....troubling........
corpse party fandom was unbelievably straight
like. it was extremely straight. past fandoms i had been in, i had managed to find other gay ppl like me who enjoyed even the rarest of femslash ships with me, cuz like, we could.
but corpse party fandom was smaller. it was smaller and unbelievably fucking straight.
more in depth: corpse party is a series with a very large cast of characters. while there are some who never interract with each other, there is still opportunity for many different things (especially in the femslash department) but the thing abt that was......the only femslash anyone ever posted abt was pretty much sei.nao....just nothing but that........
and the way that ship was always presented was almost like.....the same thing for everyone. tragic shippy art, kissing art, but i saw next to no fanfiction. no cute aus that didnt at least involve one other ship. it was always the same thing. and i noticed this.
another thing i noticed was how......vehemently against multishipping the fandom collectively seemed to be. i understand if you dont like multishipping. thats fine honestly. you do you. but like......it was almost like noncannon shipping was almost a crime.
what was defined as crack in this fandom i could hardly actually qualify as that and yet it was always like that. conflicting sexuality headcanons were treated with more hostility (im not talking abt with seiko and sayaka and others who are obviously only into girls, im talking abt the other ones)
a lot of the ships that were the most accepted were usually straight?? i remember being particulary bugged by how a lot of ppl in this fandom would ship just abt any straight ship while really obviously ignoring anything gay. it was sort of like
“hey you guys have ur few lesbian ships over there and u can also have that one m/m ship between those 2 byakudan boys who are hardly in the thing, but everthing else has 2 be straight!!”
it was so blatant. i know thats not what u all were thinking, but it came across that way to me big time. i felt incredibly unwelcome in joining this fandom when i first did. i hardly saw a single person in this fandom who was a lesbian like me. i hardly saw honestly any wlw. i felt.....really alone.......
this problem seems to be mostly gone now, (we’ve got a whole nother issue in the tag now) but i didnt want to leave this unaddressed.
i really honestly wish you all would look into why you chose to ship some of the wildest fucking het ships with no real chemistry (nan@shiki, yu1toshi, aik0maru) and yet refused to think outside the box on any type of f/f ships. i wish u all would look into why u would only look into “canon” to defend a lot of these ships when the game itself is garbage written by a gotdam pedophile.
i know not all of u in the corpse party fandom are cishet but that doesnt rly mean ur exempt from perpetuating homophobia and transphobia (and transmisogyny?? which ive seen in this fandom too tbh but im not gonna go into that) we’re all unlearning harmful shit throughout our lives so im empathetic to that. i get it. which is why all im asking is for yall to really examine this in urselves. i dont think anyones gonna read this since im not posting this in the tag, but if you are someone who this might apply to please just try to think abt this.
that post about how when you meet your Person you’ll know if bc you feel so calm makes me bitter bc like… i hate the implication that there’s one person yknow like soulmates and all that bullshit. And Yet
