#dan in his himbo era

[terrainofheartfelt]

Season 4 Dan is gorgeous 😍😍😍😍😍

His Peak Pretty Era for sure!

[video-game-luvr]

80's themed Honkai Star Rail!

A/N: Let me cook! Let me cook! These prompts will be made into yandere fics, if you guys enjoy it, the smut will come eventually.. If you folks dig it! Just be patient and let me cook! I haven't ever posted actual fics or series so my work isn't the best but I still hope you bunch enjoy it nonetheless! Feel free to correct me or tell me if it's OOC! I am always open to improving! English was not my first language.

My ask box is open for ideas and thirsts! Maybe an 80s slasher theme next? A serial killer is on the loose! Who could be behind the mass disappearances!

Neighbourhood dilfy uncle Gallagher, who is friends with your parents... This prompt would also work so well with Jingyuan! Your parents just trust their friends so much, don't they?

Welt being that hot librarian with a mature charm. You can't help but gaze at his veiny and calloused hands, holding that book, and scrutinizing everything about the contents of the book.

Sneaking out at night to skate around with Caelus and Luka!

Dan Heng who is part of a band, as a bassist. Walking around everywhere with his headphones on. Talking about music with him, and him sharing all his favourite songs with you by giving you a custom made cassette! (Though it was probably pirated)

Going to a cassette store and befriending Dan Heng gives you butterflies. The usually cold and hard-to-approach Dan Heng was now your friend!

Gepard being the local heartthrob, he is such a sweet man, always helping his neighbours with carrying their groceries to their house. Funnily enough, this man is also really clumsy. Your mom asked for his help in changing a light bulb, only for him to fall over from the ladder, luckily he didn't get any major injuries from it.

More about Gepard, he is part of the baseball club! His broad figure and precise aim makes him perfect for it! Just about everyone has a crush on this brawny oaf! He is such a himbo. He can definitely do no harm!

Rock star Blade/Yingxing! It just makes so much sense! Especially if his band is punk, definitely an alternative band for sure, even if it's not punk. Just cheering for him with all your heart, and seeing him throw a wink your way.. Orz "Meet me behind stage." He mouthed to you. The cold arrogant star took a liking to you! Now this is exciting!

Ah yes, Sunday. The epitome of a perfect man. A role model for everyone in school. (Probably a preppy private school) His drive to keep things in order is commendable. All of his perfect execution as a school president isn't limited to the school. He also most definitely goes to church and organizes youth events, leading the choir, you name it!

However, under that flawless persona. Sunday is probably hiding some deep dark secrets. Who knows what that man is thinking.(It's giving... cult leader!)

Playing videogames with Caelus! Who has been your trusty neighbour for years! Your first encounter was him digging into piles of junk, you were really weirded out at first, and probably refused to play with him. But with enough nagging from your mom, you slowly warmed up to the idea of being friends with that weird silly neighbour of yours. From that point on, you guys started to play videogames together! Caelus has started to change over time, he seems to not be able to focus on videogames anymore.. His face oddly becomes red when he catches you gazing at his face. Without your knowledge, someone's love has started to bud and bloom. (He wants you so bad! You might regret befriending this weird kid!)

Himeko is the absolute hot aunt! The resident MILF! Every time she talks with your mom, you can't help but stare at how beautiful she is. She can't help but tease you about how adorable you look with that flushed face of yours. Your mother trusts her with all her heart. I'm sure she wouldn't do anything twisted.

Argenti, an art student. His vision of what beauty is is directly painted onto the canvas. He is incredibly passionate about his vision. A beautiful birth, a beautiful life, a beautiful end to life. He may seem a bit eccentric at times, but he means well... Right? (He is probably a cult member... Not Sunday's though. He is a follower of the path of beauty!)

[yonpote]

alright im gonna say it i love dan in his butchy masc gymrat jock gay himbo era

[theemporium]

saw the eras tour movie and now i am back on my college!maxiel taylor swift au bullshit

like i feel like max meets daniel first when he's still in his post student athlete college slut era and figuring out his sexuality. and he's just like "woah, i gotta have u" and there are vibes he thinks but he's not really sure. and he really just spends like a good week pinning like alexa play enchanted plz.

and like maybe he and danny are getting close and max is over here thinking "wow this is going so great !!! any day now." and then danny invites him to like a frat outing to the football game and dan is just casually like "oh yeah my girl will be there too, super excited for you to meet her" and max is just like !! excuse me?! GIRLfriend ???????

anyways they all meet and reader looks so pretty and max is surprisingly not upset ??? his head is spinning, he is baffled, he has no idea what tf is happening but all he knows is that if he cannot have these two carnally WILL drop out of school and take a vow of celibacy because no one else will measure up, he has to have THEM

cue the mastermind montage

meanwhile danny and reader are like sizing up this lil business bro nerd himbo and going like do u think he would ? nah, wellllll maybe. and they just let him string them along through his whole plane all while taking late at night about what they would do with him and just how perfectly he would slot into their life

-🌠

(also i might have sent a poly couples ask a couple of days ago, did tumblr eat it? i only vaguely remember writing it so i could also be making it up bc it is also very late and i am eepy)

OBSESSED OBSESSED OBSESSED WITH EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS!!!

wee max being a mastermind is just so him and the way you and daniel are just like, “we want him! let’s fuck him!” instead of coming up with a whole ass plan for it😭

what taylor song do we think fits college maxiel the best???👀

[galacticlamps]

Non-spoilery flux thoughts - I liked that episode a lot better than the last one, though to be fair I was also watching it in a bit of a better headspace. There’s no arguing the fact that it was very much just one installment in a much larger story rather than being much of a standalone episode, but since we’ve only got one more episode left, that felt like a good thing rather than a bad, and there were some fairly self-contained plots that I think were woven together really well in this one. Plus, I personally think this might’ve been the Flux episode with the most bits that I responded to by going ‘omg I love that!’ whether it was a clever plot thing or a good bit of character development or a nice set or anything, really. In fact there were probably too many to Talk About talk about, so I’m just gonna start the read more off with a list of them: (that’s where the spoilers are, as well as some real speculation and also some utterly ridiculous speculation just to keep me on my toes lol)

Stuff I loved for whatever reason:

- Evil!Jodie (even if it was just her voice being used by the angels in the opening bit, I always love it when the Doctor’s actor gets a canonical reason to play something un-Doctory, whether it’s Cassandra or Salamander or a Ganger, it’s great every time)

- Yaz! Yaz in general, but Yaz the adventuress with her sidekicks the stuffy professor and the himbo from Liverpool especially. All of their costumes as well, but damnit if Yaz’s especially weren’t top-notch

- the design/establishing interior shot of the place where the Dr spent this ep (I want to call it an ark since it’s carrying genetic material from one universe to another, it seems to be Division’s base but I’m not sure if it’d also be called Division, and I know there was some other name for it mentioned like a tree or something but who cares). My first thought upon seeing it was ‘I can’t wait for them to make the playset’ yes i also noticed dr who toys seem to’ve slowed down before even 11′s era but it would look so cool as a scale model a girl can dream

- Yaz having that hologram! Like, stop the presses because I actually have to talk about this one for a sec - haw fantastic is that? Usually when companions wind up separated or on their own for a long stretch you need to turn to fanfic (shippy or otherwise) to provide a little scene focused less on the plot and more on the Doctor saying something sweet and/or encouraging, and this thing gave us BOTH the details of the mission Team 1904 is on AND a couple heartfelt moments (and all without the classic hologram pitfall seen as recently as Bel & Vinder last ep - running out of time). 13′s allowed to be feral and secretive but she’s not too emotionally constipated to leave Yaz with a nice hologram as a precaution, no less, what a win for character moments

- Dan trying to support Yaz/cheer her up. A tiny bit, but I’m guessing there was a lot of that in the last 3 years, and I know everyone else’s been calling Dan a himbo from day 1 but this was the one that really cemented it for me, which makes sense since we’re seeing him in an established role for the first time instead of a constant succession of action he can hardly keep up with. His role as a sidekick/comforter to Yaz seemed really clear even in the smaller bits this week, and considering how much she probably needs that (both in terms of deserving to be the leader for a while and getting a friendly face to be kind & optimistic while she’s shouldering that weight), I’m over the moon about it.

- Tecteun! Before she even announced herself as being Tecteun, I was already loving her character, she was clearly an eccentric herself and I did even briefly wonder if they were gonna make her turn out to be another Doctor - I’m glad they didn’t, plot-wise, Tecteun is better - but the actress was giving a performance that could’ve worked for an incarnation of the Doctor in some respects, which I think also works brilliantly with the reveal that she’s her “mother” and the argument they have later about not being the same.

- Bel and Vinder as literal ships passing in the night, sad and even perhaps a bit of a cliche, but still something I personally enjoy in a story about characters journeying to find one another!

- Tecteun again, but this point is less about her characterization and more about the reveal - how nice is it to get something right for once? I’m not gonna name names or anything but given the current climate of “so help us god if the audience is ever able to predict a plottwist or reveal ahead of time” in some other major scifi/adventure media out there these days, I was pleasantly surprised it was as straightforward as that. It’s Tecteun, it’s the only named character directly involved in the Timeless Child reveal of last season, who might be an awful mother but still has that older woman/annoyed motherish vibe to her. Of course it is, and it’s still an impactful reveal within the show/for the Doctor, and it’s also fine that everyone’s been assuming it was her all along. I appreciated that.

- I really liked that when Tecteun explained that the Doctor was the virus that altered the universe (and in the Division’s eyes, ruined it), the reasons she gave for “what makes the Doctor so dangerous” were all character development things - what she does with her life, not that she belongs to some mysterious species even Tecteun doesn’t understand. There are elements of this statement that I’m somewhat fuzzy on still, so I’ll talk more about it later, but for the “I Love It” List, the fact that the Doctor’s actions and choices and ability to inspire hope and action in others is the biggest/most impactful way in which she changes the universe was a very satisfying thing to have confirmed in-narrative.

- I loved the War Machines reference, even if I’m still trying to make sense of the new (?) UNIT history. This is another thing I’m gonna go on about below

- The snake thing the Grand Serpent used to kill the past heads of UNIT - just when I thought it couldn’t get any grosser he absorbed it into his spine! That’s awful! But credit where credit is due, very effective as alien terrors go

- This might be because there’s one hanging visibly on the back of a door in my house currently, but the pattern on Tecteun’s dress reminded me of Irish sweaters. I don’t think this bears any weight even with the Brendan story potentially being relevant again soon, I just think it’s funny that the Gallifrey-as-Ireland gag could still be going strong if that stylistic influence was intentional

- Love a good comedy hermit! and Dan being #done with Karvanista continuing to be relevant to his life was great but almost not as great as Karvanista receiving the message and just being like. Dumbass. I can’t time travel. (Also, since the hermit’s advice to Fetch His Dog turned out to skip over a few key elements like a frickin Sontaran Invasion and tunnels to different worlds, I’m left wondering just how late in the game/pivotal/climactic that’s gonna turn out to be?)

- I feel like I’ve already covered this one but I’m gonna say it again just differently this time - how many women do you think fell in love with Yaz the brilliant adventuress with her academic grandad friend and her kindhearted but not-quite-as-capable assistant in the years she spent in the 1900s? I’m thinking a lot, personally

- Vinder I love you but I’m only like 50/50 on believing that you planned on getting captured or if you’re just winging it. There are no wrong answers of course, this is Doctor Who, but you really straddle that line between capable and prepared and just kinda rolling with it that I honestly can’t tell.

- Dan being a history nerd for Liverpool specifically coming up again was great, and I thought the scene where Muttonchop Man wandered into their room on the ship and finally got identified was hysterical, frankly. The fact that they’d all met before (except Jericho) so we got to skip over the “omg is this dude relevant” bit and head straight into “time travel life is already so goddamn weird this might as well happen” is 100% what I want from this dumb scifi show

- Yaz and Dan bantering with each other is great, as is the fact that Muttonchop Man’s response to being called a ghost is to smack someone, as is him responding to Yaz’s “I probably sound nuts right now” Doctorish explanation by being like “Finally some good fucking sense.” He is a mean and weird dude and I’m very intrigued by his character.

- the first choice Tecteun gives the Doctor, between trying to save her universe and recovering her past lives, the Doctor’s response & all its obviousness, and the second offer of saving the Earth if she returns to Division - all very Doctory ultimatums, I’ll be sad if they’re not relevant any more because Tecteun seems to have evaporated, just because you usually get some great Doctor moments when they’re faced with those kinds of choices

- Whenever I wasn’t fretting about UNIT continuity during his scenes (and no, the irony of legitimately worrying about UNIT’s chronological history was not lost on me either) I was just having fun watching Prentiss/Grand Serpent be villainous, but I liked how it made sense with Yaz’s story in retrospect - he must’ve survived the Flux and become one of those aliens with their eyes set on Earth as the most stable place left in the diminished universe. I was into that plot as soon as I picked up on it, but remembering Kate was still due for an appearance I was also thinking if he puts one of those snakes inside Kate I’ll die, so extra bonus point for that not happening:

- Kate being the one to break the chain of UNIT commanders to fall to the Grand Serpent dude was great, and looking back it’s wonderful to have the timing of that bit sewn into UNIT’s disappearance circa Resolution. I’m glad that now it feels like fun foreshadowing instead of a quick fix to the potential plothole of ‘why doesn’t she just call UNIT?’ and considering how many other stories have been set in contemporary England over the years without the Doctor calling them for help, I have to conclude that if this particular thing hadn’t been planned out even then, they wouldn’t have bothered to have the Doctor try to call UNIT in Resolution in the first place. So like, wow, that’s quite a bit of planning ahead. (I know the Timeless Child was namedropped before then but still, I’m more impressed that a relatively smaller/very specific plotpoint like this was planned that far in advance, whereas the showrunner deciding on something as big as the Timeless Child as a whole concept at that stage is less surprising)

- As this ep was nearing the end, I started to worry that Karvanista & Bel would somehow (even accidentally) manage to collect Dan & co from 1904 right before Muttonchop Man could reveal his secrets (he was just so excited & relieved to talk to Yaz, I had to assume something bad would get in the way) - but I was glad nothing did, and yet the action in 1904 and 2021 still tied together cleanly at the end with the Sontarans invading again, that was a really neat way of connecting the plots without resolving them, so you’ve still got A Lot To Fix heading into the final episode, but it’s easier to follow and speculate about because they’re not totally shrouded in mystery & we can see how they’re related.

Now onto the things that aren’t quite like or dislike, but I feel the need to discuss & speculate about:

My immediate response to his very first scene in this episode was that Prentiss/Grand Serpent is really good at just giving off damn villainous vibes, but so help me if they want to retcon the Web-Invasion time gap as the establishment of UNIT! That’s like, one of maybe three things we generally accept about UNIT’s timeline, is that really up in the air now too? Plus, it’s the 1950s, which means Torchwood exists generally, and more specifically, Torchwood Soho is causing a riot every other week - and it’s not like I would ever expect them to do anything with that on TV (lmao imagine?) but it still seems like an odd time in-universe for the English government to be like “hmm how in the world would you go about setting up a secret alien investigation taskforce?” I know Torchwood came from the royal family and UNIT is with the UN but still, I wouldn’t have thought they’d be so hard up for help in that area at this point in time, that it would be the ideal time for an alien (who can time travel!) to influence Earth through UNIT - so maybe I’m just in denial, but I’m kind of inclined to believe that’s the point? That he went further back than necessary to ingrain himself completely, and rushed things - that this could be an alternate timeline, maybe even one allowed to exist simultaneously bc of whatever weirdness the Flux is doing to spacetime (and Kate did say her family had given multiple lifetimes to UNIT - I suppose it could’ve been just 2, but the same two across multiple timelines is also a fun idea)

Frankly, by the time they showed UNIT up-and-running in 1967 I was completely convinced of the alt. timeline, and I thought Kate from the trailer was going to be like the only person who remembered the real UNIT, more or less like little Amy remembering stars in the Big Bang (whoops)

UNIT in 1967 didn’t make sense to me when they flashed that date on the screen, and it still doesn’t make sense to me after the episode (I’m glad they did put the dates up, or I’d be contemplating a war-games-esque conspiracy about if that was really 1967 or not too, so at least that’s one less alternative to waste time speculating about). However, we’ve got one episode left, and I’m sure UNIT will be pretty involved in that, so I’m hoping we’ll get some clarification re: whether this is meant to be a not-quite-right timeline created by Prentiss messing with history, or if this is legitimately being proposed as how the UNIT we all know and love came to be from the start, so I’ll reserve judgement on this one until that becomes clearer, and as always, if it doesn’t become clearer, I’ll just wind up making some headcanons about it lol. (but seriously if they try to tell us there was a functional - or at least, semi functional - tardis disguised as a police box in unit custody during the third doctor’s era i might actually scream. not even in protest just because jon pertwee is no longer with us to scream for himself)

TBH I was a bit disappointed at Tecteun’s explanation of Division. Oh it’ll serve the plot fine, I’m just bummed because I went from thinking of it as probably the exact same thing as the CIA to something significantly different from it that might even have benefited in terms of ~mystery~ from the fact that everyone was treating it like the CIA (the ‘plottwist’ that it involved more species than just Time Lords, for instance). My personal theory was that it had very little to do with Gallifrey specifically, but being a super-mega-powerful organization with operatives all over the universe, of course it had access to Time Lord technology and even some Time Lord agents (and some residual Time Lord Superiority might even’ve been responsible for certain characters’ assumption that it must be a Time Lord Thing - ie destroying Gallifrey?). Lately, I had begun to think Division (often called just that, not The Division) was actually something specifically aimed at combating the threat from Swarm - the latter being some kind of collective and the former’s job being to like divide it and conquer it or something, idk. I even thought it might be older than Gallifrey or the Time Lords but lol guess not, it sounds like it has basically the exact same (rough) history as the CIA - a Time Lord agency that operates outside of its society’s rules about interference, using their understanding and mastery of the web of time to influence and shape other times and places into what they “have to be.” And like it’s fine, that’s fine, it’s an interesting enough basis for a story and we all know that to be true from the fact that the dr who universe already includes several stories dealing with that very premise - I was just a little let down because I thought I had followed the clues saying it would be something stranger/more specific than that, but alas, I was just making things up again.

On a different note, I want to take a moment to appreciate that it’s 2021 and we’re still so screwed as a society in terms of sexism that Jodie playing the Doctor got blamed for male crime in the UK like a couple days ago (which I personally haven’t even reblogged memes about bc I find the whole thing so pathetic and disturbing I didn’t even really want to give that space on my blog, however funny the jokes were) - but even so, we’ve got this iconic show who’s main conflict at present is essentially that of an estranged daughter and her abusive mother tearing the universe apart literally & figuratively trying to stop one another. Sure it’s larger-than-life and wrapped up in a heavy dose of long-ridiculed genre fiction, but at the end of the day a show with a tremendous cultural impact is centered on relationships that aren’t about men (I’m not going to say quintessentially female bc we all know how screwed up those ppl who think there’s a universal experience of womanhood are, but you get the gist). I 100% know men who watch this show who have never willingly engaged in any media with a narrative where a mother-daughter dynamic mattered this much, especially one that dealt with conflict and trauma and not just ‘a mother’s love saving the day.’ And in the same episode, we have a woman leading a team of explorers in 1904 and we did a speedrun of the history of UNIT, in which the only reason the modern organization isn’t run by a woman is because that woman was the first person able to outsmart the villain manipulating the group for decades.

A lot of ‘girl power’ sentiments these days are hollow even when they aren’t busy being wildly exclusionary, and I don’t want to sound like that’s the thing I’m praising so much as the way it just really felt like a milestone to see so much of this episode centered on and led by women without it feeling tokenizing. Like, it isn’t a random new woman who’s the head of UNIT that figured out what was going on, in order to show women being cleverer than men - it was Kate, because she’s the only person it makes sense to have in that role, both as the last head of UNIT we saw on television and as the Brigadier’s daughter and a character who’s spent her whole life in and around the organization. And likewise Yaz is leading Team 1904 because her history and experience make her the logical choice to be in charge (I was pleased to see they didn’t shoehorn in some unnecessary sexism just for the sake of it to challenge that). And the Doctor vs Tecteun is the central conflict in the mystery that propelled most of last season and all of this one, so we simply could not have any of this story without them.

Again, I don’t want to oversimplify things and just be like ‘diversity win!’ but it definitely felt nice to see that - I think it’s a good sign that it was only really on reflection that I even noticed just how influential women got to be in this episode, because it was so well-executed in terms of “yes of course the plot would lead us here” - it might be one of the first times female relationships seemed quite this central without the show almost...bragging about it? shining a spotlight and being like “attention everyone, we will now cut to the Women plotline”? Not necessarily girlbossing it, but at least congratulating itself for deigning to be so progressive? idk. Of course, all of 13′s episodes have done their part in foregrounding women on this show but it just felt uncommonly substantial and meaty this week, like we’re finally starting to open doors to the many interesting stories and character dynamics the show hasn’t had access to when the Doctor was always taken to be a man. Not that this particular cycle of abuse could only happen within the confines of a mother/daughter dynamic, of course, just that it’s impressive to me that we’re getting one like that at the heart of a show like Doctor Who.

(I also don’t mean to say the show hasn’t had fantastic and organic female-relationship-driven plots before, it absolutely has, but in the past they were mostly limited to sidelines and b-plots by the assumption that the Doctor themself was always a man, and even in 13′s era there are times when her identity as a female incarnation felt important, but in a sort of shallow way, like in The Witchfinders, where the set-up - if not the actual main conflict in the episode, thank heavens - seemed to be as heavy-handed as “oh no, the Doctor must encounter sexism now”)

Mini-rant over, Back to speculation:

I mentioned before that I liked how Tecteun focused on the Doctor’s actions as what made her special, but as much of a relief as that answer was, it doesn’t quite explain everything. She described her as a “virus” in this universe - but why? If she never retained any memories of Division before now, how could she be anything but just another Time Lord? Sure she was a rouge one, but they do have those every now and again, and if her danger comes from her ability to inspire people and give them hope, well, that’s a character arc we watched happen on the show in the ‘60s, not an inherent trait that comes either from the Doctor’s mysterious wormhole origins or even her time in the hands of the Division. Of course, it could well be possible that this very contradiction is the resolution to the Timeless Child business, or at least the Flux plot - maybe Tecteun has been blinded by her personal belief that the Doctor is Special, because of how she found her and experimented on her and used her, so even when the Doctor’s memory is wiped, she assumes there’s something ~magical~ about her every time she sees what a large impact the Doctor has had on the universe, and considers it proof that this universe has been ruined by the Doctor (someone inherently above it, beyond it, outside it) “contaminating” it. Maybe the Doctor can’t stop all of Division, but she can prove to them that they don’t need to destroy the Universe, because her influence upon it has been organic since she never had any knowledge of what lay beyond it.

Maybe that explanation is too optimistic of me, but I do think tracing the Timeless Child through Division to the Hartnell Doctor will still require some delving into Tecteun’s mistakes, even though she doesn’t seem likely to be around to discuss them. For instance, how did the Division Doctor become the First Doctor we know of? If their memory was erased and they regenerated into a child, that sounds less like a Ruth-esque escape/hiding plan and more like a punishment a-la The War Games. Did Tecteun make a sentimental call and ask for the Doctor to be mind-wiped and returned to Gallifrey as an inconspicuous child, rather than killed outright? It seems kind of likely, and if she did, then wouldn’t it make sense for that (uncharacteristically compassionate) choice to perhaps haunt her as a mistake? Isn’t there a good chance she’d blame herself for putting the Doctor back in that universe as the root of all its evils as a failed experiment? Couldn’t it be that the Doctor isn’t upsetting anything by existing and inspiring change, but that Tecteun just assumes that must be a ‘virus’ because she can’t stop herself from thinking of the Doctor as special and powerful and not belonging there, even if in reality there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be? Of course, maybe Tecteun has some good reasons to worry that the mind wipe might not’ve been as effective as she hoped, when the child comes of age and takes the name the Doctor again, and when he steals a Tardis (possibly even the same, old & now outdated Tardis?) and it finds a way to resemble a Police Box again? Maybe? (I know I’m kind of rambling at this point, but speculation like this is why my major Timeless Children complaint was that it was a season closer rather than an opener. It introduced controversial lore changes at face value and then disappeared off television for a year and a half without giving the audience enough info to sink their teeth into and theorize about, so people had to either decide they liked it or didn’t with virtually no idea what role that information was supposed to play in the narrative, without which it’s pretty much impossible to make a judgement that’s worth anything - so I really appreciate having more of a narrative to talk about now, even if some of these questions will be answered/completely blown out of the water in just a few days).

This is not an intelligent point and it does not come from any foreshadowing the show has given us, but I really liked Sacha Dhawan’s Master and with the Chibnall/13 era coming to a close I just vaguely hope we haven’t seen the last of him, so unfortunately I’ve temporarily become one of those people who keeps going “ok ok this is gonna be the Master!” I never really believe it, and I don’t have any particular headcanons or speculation that involves him, I just keep saying it because I think it’d be fun to see more of that incarnation and Flux is already so busy, what’s the harm in adding one more recognizable face? Anyways I’m just stalling at this point, I’ll admit to my two ridiculous Master moments in this episode:

#1 - I bet the Ood is secretly the Master! If you think about it, most of the Ood we’ve seen working somewhere for a prolonged period of time get some kind of name or at least numerical designation, but this one is part of Division and yet so far we’ve only heard him called Ood - maybe because he has a name, but it’s a transparent reference to/pun on “the Master,” perhaps? Plus, how funny would it be if it was like The Rescue, where the Guy in a Mask actually turns out to be a Guy in a Mask? If by some freak chance this absurd theory turns out to be true, I insist it be revealed via an obscure joke about 18th Commedia Dell’Arte play Servant of Two Masters. I will not accept criticism at this time.

#2 - The Grand Serpent is going to be talking to the Master on that screen! Oh, wait, no, that’s the Sontarans. Fine, it makes more sense for them to be involved at the end of Flux again, I’ll give you that much, but that doesn’t mean I’m convinced that if the universe were ending and the whole thing was slowly approaching the Earth so that it’d be the last thing standing and coincidentally the Doctor’s preferred stomping grounds, the Master wouldn’t head straight there and immediately kick up as much of a fuss as possible (like pointing all its nukes at the planet’s major cities, perhaps?) to get the Doctor’s attention, simply to ask her what the heck was going on. That is absolutely something I think the Master would do, even if it is the Sontarans this particular time.

I don’t have like complaints complaints, but I would’ve liked to see more Vinder, so I’m assuming whatever he discovers in Passenger will be too important to’ve shown before the finale.

I can say I’m a touch disappointed that the watch seems to get opened in the trailer - or at the very least, that that image is in the trailer instead of being something we discover next week. I’ll be honest, I had kind of thought the Doctor might pull an “I choose to stay/It’s my choice now” type thing with regard to her past, even before Tecteun started making offers. I could’ve seen a version of events where they put an end to Division and the Doctor has access to the watch & stuff on the shelves (fun fact, before I saw the watch I thought the whispering/buzzing was gonna reveal a shrunk & contained universe like the planets from the Season 11 finale, but more impressive) on her own terms, but instead she decides not to know, because she’s got this universe and wants to continue living in it and being part of it - I could see her saying that she’s glad she knows the lives she lived happened, but that that world, and Division, and everyone who knew her from it is gone (since by my count Swarm, Azure, and Karvanista are like the only ones left alive who ever met Ruth?) and laying it to rest so she can get on with the life she has. I could even see Ruth being the one who suggests she does that - maybe she appears again and says she’s alright being forgotten whenever whatever happens to her happens and giving 13 (and the Doc’s we already know) a fresh slate. it won’t mean she didn’t live those lives but it could free her for the future, and we all know the show likes to return to the theme of the future needing the Doctor, so maybe that’s what Ruth does, her way of being ‘recognizable’ to the audience as the same character we’re used to, by sacrificing herself. I don’t mean choosing to die, mind, just deciding that whenever her current incarnation does reach its end, she’s willing to sort of tap out just like everyone she knew who didn’t get to regenerate - like Gat and Lee and whoever else she knows she’s lost that 13 isn’t even aware of. Ruth would get to know she’d have future, and a good one, if 13′s so hellbent on protecting it, but cutting it off from her current situation might be the safest thing for that future, so they can exist as more or less separate people, albeit with certain qualities (like the morality Tecteun complained about) persisting despite the ‘erasure of identity.’

I think it was the shot of Maybe-Lungbarrow Again being the only thing they showed with the watch whispers that made me think we might never get to see it, and the writers want the audience to just go on believing whatever EU wildness we want - but that watch looked very much open in the trailer for next week, so unless it’s like, some kind of bluff from Tecteun, or doesn’t work the way we expect a Chameleon Arch to work as a container of a Time Lord consciousness, then I’m pretty sure we’ll see where this goes. In which case my theory’s almost certainly out the window, but I still felt like I should write it down while I had it.

I wasn’t super thrilled that Tecteun seems to have been killed (I hesitate to ever pronounce people definitely dead on Doctor Who, Time Lords especially) but even if she really is, I’m sure we aren’t done with learning about her story. One thing in particular that caught my eye was the fact that she didn’t seem all that bothered by Swarm and Azure turning up at Division. I don’t just meant she didn’t expect to be killed, since people can always underestimate their enemies, but even if Division isn’t as Swarm-oriented as I initially thought, he was the prisoner of people with Division guns in his first ever scene, so I would’ve expected her to be more put off by his presence at her super special headquarters, whether or not she appreciated the size of the threat. And of course, he had that line about both of them “releasing” one another, so I’m starting to wonder if she let him escape her own organization (which she said she wasn’t really in charge of, just more or less for the moment) - possibly so he could help create the Flux somehow? I’m still a bit fuzzy on how his plan with the Mouri and the Ravagers ties into everything but again, we’ve only one week left so I guess I won’t be in suspense for long.

The angel got mentioned but I still wonder what happened to Claire, and, for that matter, the little girl who was sent back to 1901 with the gang, but I’m not sure if I actually expect any follow-up there. We know she becomes the older woman in the village, but that doesn’t tell us much considering Yaz, Dan, and Jericho probably had to decide to part ways with her at some point (which is only slightly odd, she’s a kid but she was kinda psychic and could maybe’ve been useful to them on their search) or what happened to her in the 60s when the town disappeared again - maybe she simply died if that’s what happens when an angel touches you twice, but I thought they had like agreed to leave her alone or something?

I’m also starting to wonder how much of this won’t get wrapped up in Flux - the poster for the New Year’s Special certainly seems to imply that the Tardis malfunctions won’t be, but there are so many players in the game right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than just that which outlives this season.

[terrainofheartfelt]

why is s3 dair so good??? honestly, what is it about them (both as individual characters and relationship-wise) that makes it so... good, for lack of a better word?

it's the Narrative Foils, babe!

no, but really, this plot had EVERYTHING: there's first the setup that they're both at nyu even though they didn't want to be - it's where the ended up after their respective Yale dreams fell through.

then, there's the role reversal of Blair, who's always used to being on top, sure she was caught up in power struggles at Constance but there people still cared who she was, and now, nobody does. she's just another freshman. and Dan, who was used to a certain invisible kind of existence, is noticed on his very first day for being a Writer - and a good one! and he makes friends who actually like him as a person! it's him with the social capital now, and the first thing he spends it on is to help out Blair. (insane. they are insane. they should kiss.)

🪑 aside, this is also the first time in the show ever that Dan is unattached narratively to Serena. I mean, they're friends and on the verge of being family, but they'd been given real romantic closure in s2, so they start off the college arc truly as just friends, which means for the first time in the show, Dan's romantic arc prospects are openended, which in my unexpert opinion, pours a little extra sauce on his loaded interactions with Blair.

also he and Blair's roommate fuck and Blair sees him shirtless in his post woodchuck todd glow up and idk how a girl doesn't have strong feelings about that ya feel me?

AND (I think Nads has touched on this before?) Constance/St. Jude's was pretty...partitioned, I guess you could say, so with the exception of The Essay Contest, I don't think Blair and Dan were put in the position for any competition, but at a fully coed school? And with their similar interests they were bound to end up in classes together, and I swear it is such a CRIME that we didn't get any classroom hijinks with these ding-dongs. competing for top grades and rankings, fighting over a TA position, checking out all the material in the library on a topic to sabotage the other's research, it could have fed us Damien Darko vibes a season and a half earlier and I am BITTER.

I think ultimately it's how the beginning of college presented a twist on their previously perceived social standings (and understandings of each other), and that the sheer potential of starting over in a new place opened up windows of story that didn't/couldn't exist in the high school ecosystem. was it ultimately underexplored and underutilized? absolutely, but at least we have that s3 dair FWB fic on ao3...

[terrainofheartfelt]

The way she turns all the way around to follow Dan with her eyes in that third gif…that Katie girl was def trying to hit

And who can blame her? Not me, certainly.