daughter-of-the-clayr

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

you punch nazis!

(requested by anonymous)

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

broooo did you seriously disturb my eternal rest & bring me back to this mortal coil just because my ancient enemy the eternal night has returned? after i sealed it away and everything? which one of you tampered with my binding runes 🙄

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

big fan of stories that, while undoubtedly being about the power of friendship, acknowledge that the power of incredible violence is just as important

the love was there. the love changed everything. the crowbar helped also

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

Deca fans who show the Doctor as an Earth nerd whilst at the academy I am sorry but I disagree. The Doctor hates earth in the unearthly child. The Rani on the other hand is obsessed with Dinosaurs. So it would be much more fun and enjoyable to make Ushas the earth nerd but only with the pre human era.

Humans rock up and the Rani is like nah that dull. On the other hand dinosaurs, they rock.

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

anyone saying that new who adding new things to the canon of how things like regeneration work is bad just don't understand the show

the time war and the doctor being the last of the time lords was a new who concept. the idea of there being a regeneration limit came in with the fifth doctor. gallifrey was first named in three's era, and we didn't see time lords until the end of two. regeneration wasn't a thing until hartnell wanted to quit and they wanted to keep the show going!

doctor who is always going to be adding new stuff. some of it's gonna be silly, some of it's gonna be good, most of it's gonna be a bit of both. you gotta embrace it, it's part of the show

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

Oh no, you got isekaied into the last media you read/watch. You are now a background character dead center in the plot. Are you surviving.

Yes

No

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

Nothing hits like "romantic couple and a third guy who's not dating either of them but is definitely a part of this dynamic"

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

fascinating how every single female villain in sja looks at sarah like they want to make her scream. and then kill her obviously but the line between homoeroticism and homicide is really quite thin

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

For my part of the @uchibigbang, I’ve made this illustration to go along with a delightful Zero Escape/Ghost Trick crossover fic written by @deathgamegirl! With Ghost Trick being the first VN I ever played, I was so stoked to work on this, so please go give it a read here. It will be updated each Wednesday of June!

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

Ten says "everything's coming up Doctor!" during Fear Her and Twelve says "Stupid Doctor...handsome, adorable, very approachable Doctor!" during The Pyramid at the End of the World. Are there any other examples of the Doctor referring to themself in the third person?

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

I’ve seen some posts floating around saying things like, “Belinda was always a mom, the Doctor just corrected the timeline,” and I genuinely cannot stress enough how little that addresses the core issues people have with how her story was handled.

First of all, if that was the intention—if the idea was that Belinda was always meant to be a mother and the timeline just needed to be “set right”—they did a poor job of executing it. A twist that major, one that fundamentally alters a character’s identity or arc, requires setup. Foreshadowing. Emotional groundwork. You can’t just spring something that massive on the audience in the last five minutes and expect it to feel meaningful instead of disorienting.

And here’s the thing: Doctor Who has done that kind of plot before—successfully. A great comparison is Amy and Rory. The show literally did the “someone you love was erased from time and the universe needs to be corrected to bring them back” storyline already. And while I’ve got my own qualms with how Amy’s arc was handled overall, that particular beat actually worked.

Why? Because there were signs. The cracks in time. The missing memories. A sense of loss Amy couldn’t place. Little inconsistencies that made the audience lean forward and feel that something was wrong. Not to mention: Rory was introduced before he disappeared. We knew him. We saw his dynamic with Amy. We cared about him. We barely see Poppy in these two episodes, other than "child missing bad" we really have no attachment to her.

Now imagine if we never met Rory. If Amy had been introduced as a fierce, independent woman with no attachments, someone whose refusal to be tied down was a defining trait—and then the show suddenly revealed, in the finale, that actually she was about to get married the whole time to a man we’d never seen, and now she’s a devoted wife. No buildup. No context. Just surprise! emotional transformation. That would feel bizarre, right?

That’s exactly what happened with Belinda.

The final minutes of the finale reframe her not just as someone who once had a child, but as someone whose true self is supposedly defined by that role—and we’re meant to believe that this identity has now been “restored” to her, and we’re told it’s been restored to her as a reward. But it doesn’t feel like a revelation. It feels like a contradiction.

It’s like they wanted to write her as fierce and independent, but didn’t also want to imply that she wanted kids or thought about kids—because society still tends to associate maternal longing or caretaking instincts with weakness, or with not being a “strong” woman. So instead of exploring that complexity, they just didn’t. They wrote her as a fully autonomous character, with no visible yearning or absence, and then stapled a child onto her arc at the end.

And just to be absolutely clear: the problem is not that Belinda is a mother. You can write a fierce, independent, female-presenting character who’s also a parent. Those things are not mutually exclusive. The problem is that the story didn’t earn it.

Writers often avoid giving powerful women maternal traits because they assume femininity and strength can’t coexist—but that’s a separate conversation. The real issue here is that the show never showed us that this part of Belinda was missing. It never laid the groundwork for that emotional restoration to resonate. It didn’t feel like they revealed who she truly was—it felt like they replaced her with someone else.

It’s not that you can’t tell a story where a forgotten child or a missing family is recovered from a broken timeline. That kind of emotional twist can be powerful. But if that’s the story you want to tell, you have to earn it. You have to make the absence felt before you try to fill it. You have to let us sense the missing piece and ache for its return. Without that, it doesn’t feel like a twist—it feels like a contradiction.

And no, Poppy showing up once in The Story & the Engine is not proper setup. If this was truly the intended arc from the beginning, then it needed clues. Give us subtle signs. Let Belinda hesitate when asked simple questions. Let her glance at a photo and seem unsettled. Let her correct someone’s memory and then immediately second-guess herself. Plant a sense of wrongness in her own life that even she can’t quite name.

There’s even a interview with RTD about reshooting the beginning of The Robot Revolution to give Belinda roommates, because he thought no one would buy her owning an entire house by herself.

But if this twist with Poppy was truly planned from the start? Then leave her in that big, echoing house. Let it be part of the unease. Let there be a child’s toy tucked into the back of a drawer she doesn’t remember buying. A room she avoids, too pristine and untouched. A lullaby she hums under her breath without knowing where she learned it. Give us texture. Give us silence that feels too quiet.

Let us feel the shape of what’s missing before you tell us what it was.

That’s how you write a twist that resonates—by trusting your audience to notice the gaps, to feel the ache, and to recognize the truth when it finally appears. Not by pulling a rabbit out of a hat and calling it destiny.

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

Square Enix on bluesky just posted KAIN HIGHWIND all caps no context. What do they mean by this.

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

bro last night was totally redacted! last night was fully expunged from the record. bro, do you... can you remember last night? what did we do...? what did... did we hurt someone? bro? why won't you look at me? what did I do...? whose blood is this...? bro...?

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

what's rtds thing about having kids in unit. this only started when rtd took over. moffat? no kids. chibnall? not only is unit not active for most of the run due to fucking prenttis, when it's active? no kids. rtd? suddenly, kids. the only thing kate specifically hired in moffat and chibnalls run was lesbians.

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

you! dr who fan! play the zero escape trilogy.

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

How the Doctors I have watched so far would react to getting kidnapped by space marines while visiting year 40k humanity, an extremely silly masterpost

One:

Shakes his head sadly and says "Dear oh dear. Now isn't this a mess. Barbara, let this to be a lesson to you about the folly of religious literalism." Leaves immediately without doing anything.

Nine:

"Rose, look at these tyrannids! Aren't they fantastic? We've established a psychic bond and I have learnt the ancient songs of their people. Rose I am resonating tyrannids. Now here's how we escape. I'll need a small spatula and a distraction. Mickey, go and be a distraction."

Ten:

Decides its his sacred duty to bring down the entire imperium. Found three days later standing alone in a ruined temple surrounded by unconscious space marines and ranting about being a god.

Four:

Has an existential crisis over whether the imperium should be destroyed for the harm it does invading other people's planets or preserved for the good it does by keeping back the forces of chaos.

Eleven:

Somehow managed to recruit a squadron of marines as his personal army. Is very excited by this. Saying bow ties aren't cool is heresy now. Yeah. He's got a fez again and he's not afraid to use it.

Twelve:

blathers something about having once done tango classes with a space marine back on the old casteleborian mining ring with jim the fish, climbs out a window, and is found three weeks later teaching orks to play monopoly.

Thirteen:

In the span of a week manages to get into a really intense lesbian situationship with a battle nun and saves her city from chaos forces in a scene so deeply touching and beautiful yet resonant with unfulfilled longing that it wins a bafta

Fifteen:

Asks the question "so, inside the armour -" enough times that it starts to become slightly awkward. Calls a reclusiarch babes. Gets really intense about how cool titan machinery is. Finds a mechanicus clone factory and gets very very quiet and then says "you're going to hell and i personally am sending you". What happens next is officially erased from the history books. A space marine adopts a cherub without quite knowing why he did that. No one ever speaks of Fifteen's visit again.

Seven:

Claims to have been captured by space marines but it actually turns out it was all deliberate because he needed to get close enough to a sealed temple to reclaim and destroy a "sacred relic of the emperor" that is actually a nuclear bomb Omega once built because he thought it would make a good fly swatter

[daughter-of-the-clayr]

i am glad that rtd acknowledged that the reason 14 and 15 can be So Open is that 13 wasn't. that 13s inability to communicate her emotions led directly to 14 and 15 being so clear.