#doctor who season 10 poll

[performing-personhood]

Help, I'm trying to get my spouse into Twelve.

He found Ten and Eleven "too... shouty?" so as a last ditch effort to get him into Doctor Who, I'm gonna try Twelve. (He is a former soldier and current public school teacher, so he would really love Danny Pink - but I have to trick him into getting emotionally invested first.)

Yes I know there's a typo in the poll title, I'm annoyed too

For alternate answers, leave a comment or reblog or something - I want everyone's input please and thank you 🩷

[onepiece-polls]

OPLA fan cast polls - Top 10 winners!

By far most of the submitted fancasts were accepted by the fans, having had a minimum of 50% yay votes. But which fancasts had the most fans behind them? Here is the top 10!

10. Karen Fukuhara as Tashigi with 82.4% of the votes.

Her experience with martial arts and sword fighting might have convinced the fans who weren't familiar with her previous roles yet!

9. Rhey Ripley as Charlotte Smoothie with 82.5% of the votes.

Her wrestler build probably convinced a lot of people she could pull this off. And maybe the lesbians went wild about her.

8. Peter Capaldi as Dr Hiriluk with 84% of the votes.

Once a doctor... (also, he just kinda looks like him)

7. Alexander Siddig as Nefertari Cobra with 84.5% of the votes.

This Sudanese actor convinced the fans that he could play another desert kingdom ruler!

6. Amber Midthunder as Laki with 85% of the votes.

With only 1 vote really against her (we will find you and hunt you down 😛), the fans think this native American actress is perfect to play Laki!

5. Jamie Lee Curtis as Kureha with 87% of the votes.

With by far the most submissions, I had expected her to come out on top, but 5th place isn't bad at all either! Besides, she has practically been cast already, and the fans seem to agree! If someone else gets cast after all, there'd better be a real good reason for that!

4. Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Brogy with 88.1% of the votes.

This tall strongman from Iceland seemed the perfect fit for the friendly giant!

3. Kevin Chamberlin as Tom with 89.1% of the votes.

Tom's a fishman, Kevin is human. And yet, look at their faces: the same. The fans could do nothing but agree with this fan cast (though they would also love him as Wapol).

2. Michael Jai White as Ohm with 89.8% of the votes.

Corporate needs you to find the differences between these two pictures.

The fans: "They're the same picture."

No one voted against this fan cast, so in that aspect you could say he should be the winner! However, a few more people needed to be convinced, compared to the number one...

And the winner...

1. Javicia Leslie as Miss Doublefinger with 92.9% of the votes!

Her looks, her acting experience (as Batwoman for example), and her experience with different (combat) sports have convinced almost all of the fans that she is a perfect fit! We are looking forward to see Javicia as Miss Doublefinger in the next season (?) of the One Piece Live Action!

Thank you all for submitting your fancasts and for voting on these polls! ❤

[jupitermelichios]

I've been thinking about the vibes of Dr Who as a show and also the fact that it's run for so long under so many different creative teams and has changed massively multiple times, and the ways that complicates analysing and reviewing it.

Which resulted in me asking myself: were the expectations and mental image of the show i had prior to watching it accurate to the the first arc/season/episodes I actually watched, especially in terms of tone, vibes, and what it felt like the show was trying to do. And also, how much does the answer to that question depend on where you start?

And since this is tumblr, i immediately decided to make a poll about it!

(i've gone new who only - and then lumped some doctors together by show runner as well - just because of the poll options limit and the age demographics on tumblr, but if you started on old who feel free to sound off in the comments, I'd love to hear your answers!)

For anyone who isn't sure what number their first doctor was, the actors are as follows:

9 - Christopher Eccleston

10 - David Tennant

11 - Matt Smith

12 - Peter Capaldi

13 - Jodi Whittaker

14 - Nchuti Gatwa

If you feel like giving me more details in the comments/tags/reblogs that would be great! And if you're interesting in the results, don't forget to reblog so the poll reaches a wider sample of people 🙂

[justahumblememefarmer]

Ultimate Doctor Who Poll Round 2 - Matchup 5

Episode Summaries under the cut

6: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - Season 1, Episodes 9 & 10: The Doctor and Rose chase an object through the time vortex where it lands in WWII London during the London Blitz. Rose meets another time traveler named Captain Jack Harkness who is selling the object the TARDIS chased. They also encounter a mysterious child with the ability to control technology, and his appearance of a scar on his hand and a gas mask fused to his face, as well as constantly calling out for his mummy are spreading like a plague, turning people into zombies controlled by him.

They discover the ship that crashed into him was an alien ambulance, and the nanotech healing didn't know what to do with a human, but used his body as the blue print to start changing people. The boy's sister is revealed to really be his mother, and by admitting that, the nanogenes are able to use the parent DNA to override the change and restore everybody to normal. After Jack helps them, the Doctor and Rose offer for him to travel with them in the TARDIS.

134: The Bells of Saint John - Season 7B, Episode 1: The Doctor receives a phone call from Clara Oswald, who appears identical to two other women the Doctor has met, both of whom died after saving his life and giving the same final words. The Doctor finds that Clara has no knowledge of this, but is attacked by a robot shortly after the Doctor arrives. While he takes care of her, he discovers that several people around the world have been captured by these robots, their mind stolen from their body and uploaded to the internet. The Doctor finds the source of these robots and uploads the leaders mind to the internet as well, forcing them to send everybody's minds back to their bodies to get her out. The Doctor invites Clara to travel with him, while he secretly tries to discover her connection to the two other women.

(Beat #123: The Lodger in Round 1)

[gay-disabled-characters-showdown]

LGBTQ+ Disabled Characters Showdown Round 2, Wave 2, Poll 10

A character being totally canon LGBTQ+ and disabled was not required to be in this competition. Please check qualifications and propaganda before asking why a character is included.

Check out the other polls in this wave and prior here.

Julian Bashir-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Qualifications:

Disability: Along with being generally awkward with conversation and not knowing how to talk to people, a part of his backstory is that he was “underperforming” in school so his parents got him illegally genetically enhanced to “fix” him (in the show this is treated as a horrible fucked-up thing that they did LGBTQ+: He has a relationship with another male character on the show that everybody behind-the-scenes (except the homophobic producer) treated as canonically romantic. The homophobic producer had to tell the writers to stop putting Bashir and Garak in scenes together because they got along too well and he didn’t want the audience to think they were a couple. The non-homophobic producer said in a documentary looking back on DS9 that one of his biggest regrets about the show is not making the relationship actually canon.

He was canonically intellectually disabled as a child, which his parents attempted to "correct" with illegal gene editing. This eliminated his intellectual disability, but he displays many many autistic traits still (socially awkward, infodumps, hyperempathetic, echolalia, blunt). This lends itself to the popular interpretation that the gene editing couldn't "correct" his autism, but it did change exactly which autistic traits he had. One of his closest onscreen relationships is with Elim Garak, a relationship that both actors have since said is romantic in nature, and Andy Robinson (Garak's actor) has explicitly said he played Garak as being attracted to Bashir. There is also some possible evidence of Julian being trans; in one episode, he says this of a situation in which he had to transfer a fetus from one of his friends into another due to an emergency (paraphrased): "The fetus was in distress, and the only available candidates were Major Kira... and me." This line potentially implies he is capable of carrying a fetus. Furthermore, he canonically has a name that his parents used to call him that he refuses to answer to now (Jules). In-universe, this is due to him finding out about his genetic engineering, but it is very transgender of him.

Propaganda:

He uses all of his free time to role play historical events with his best friend - He intentionally got one question wrong on his finals so that he wouldn’t be valedictorian - On like 5 separate occasions he gets invited to medical conferences then kidnapped on the way - Season 2 episode 22 “The Wire”

He is so awesome. Very autistic, very interesting character. He's an extremely caring doctor, to the point he once stayed on a plague-ridden planet with no futuristic tech, mixing medicine by hand for weeks in an attempt to cure the populace. Which he succeeds at, by the way!! He also, after finding a rogue group of former enemy soldiers who have managed to kick their dependence on the drug used by the enemy government to control them, Julian agrees to try to formulate a way for all of the soldiers to be free of their dependence. He only fails due to interference. Also, when Garak is suffering withdrawal from a brain implant, he stays by his bedside for days on end, caring for him, and even going to the heart of hostile territory to ask the head of the Space KGB how he can cure him. And that's not all! In addition to being a very dedicated (if often unethical) doctor, he is also a space tennis player! He has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth immediately upon meeting anyone new, and not just because of his canonical foot fetish! I'm not joking about that. It is canon.

The qualifications and propaganda paragraphs correspond, @convenient-plot-device is the second submitter.

Israel ‘Izzy’ Hands-Our Flag Means Death

Qualifications:

Gay, amputee

Propaganda:

Has a very interesting arc with losing his leg in the second season, also very gay. He’s neat, very funny.

[mariacallous]

It’s election season in Europe, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has decided that George Soros can again win him votes. “The Soros network is embedded in the European institutions. They are so embedded that the European institutions give them money to operate,” Orban said in late March on his near-weekly interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Radio. “They’re in the Commission, in the Parliament, and quite a few prime ministers are clearly Soros holdouts.”

Between June 6 and 9, citizens in all 27 European Union member states will choose a new Parliament, and Orban kicked off his campaign in Hungary with a fresh dose of attack politics. Brussels, he said in his March interview, was “increasingly becoming a prisoner of the international network of activists that George Soros has built up over the last 30 years with great effort.”

This isn’t the first time Orban has used Soros, the Hungarian Jewish financier and philanthropist, as a punching bag in an election campaign. He has done so before to win elections in Hungary. What is new this time, however, is that Orban’s spokesperson immediately translated his boss’s stinging attack on Soros from Hungarian into English and posted the translation on X (formerly Twitter). Clearly, the attack is being taken to a new, European level.

How attack politics works, and why the Hungarian prime minister has used it often during the last 10 years, is described in a 2019 BuzzFeed News article, “The Unbelievable Story of the Plot Against George Soros.” (An earlier version appeared in the Swiss magazine Das Magazin.) It tells the story of two American spin doctors who designed Orban’s first hate campaign against Soros back in 2013, managing to turn Soros—who got rich in the United States and poured billions of dollars of his fortune into organizations supporting democratic governance and freedom of speech all over the world—into Hungary’s most hated man within weeks. In fact, their anti-Soros smear campaign was such a success that Orban, who himself worked at the Soros-funded Central European Research Group and studied briefly on a Soros scholarship at the University of Oxford, won the election.

These two spin doctors, Arthur Finkelstein and George Birnbaum—Jewish themselves—worked with a simple idea: If you want to win elections, make sure you go on the attack. The underlying assumption is that many voters know whom they will vote for. Consequently, it is difficult to motivate them to vote for another candidate. Demoralizing them, however, is easier. You discredit your political opponent with a volley of accusations, mostly false, so your opponent’s supporters will start having doubts. As a result, some will not vote. Others will defect to you. Finkelstein and Birnbaum called this “rejectionist voting.”

The duo used this technique first in Israel in 1995, just after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. New elections were scheduled, with the social democrat Shimon Peres as the designated winner. Very few observers gave the young conservative Likud candidate Benjamin Netanyahu, who was polling 20 percentage points behind, any chance. Netanyahu contracted Finkelstein and Birnbaum to help him get out of the underdog position. They told him the only way he would have a chance of winning would be if his campaign focused on spreading the rumor that Peres intended to give half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Peres did not want to do that; it was a complete fabrication. But the more the line spread, the more journalists asked him about it. Instead of pushing and discussing his own political agenda, Peres was forced to defend himself against Netanyahu’s lie. Netanyahu completely trapped Peres and, to the surprise of many, won the 1996 election, with more than 50 percent of the vote. This is how Netanyahu’s spectacular rise in politics began.

In the early 2000s, Finkelstein and Birnbaum helped Bulgarian and Romanian politicians gain power with similar campaigns. Then Netanyahu introduced them to another ambitious politician in Europe: Viktor Orban. He had been prime minister between 1998 and 2002 before losing power. Orban felt so humiliated that he swore he would never lose again. In 2010, the spin doctors advised him to conduct a tough, polarizing campaign against bureaucrats and foreign investors. It worked: Orban’s alliance won a comfortable two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, and the social democrats suffered a stinging defeat that they still have not recovered from today.

During the next election, in 2014, the opposition hardly managed to get a word in. Still, Orban took no chances and again consulted the advisors who had helped him win earlier. They told him he needed a scapegoat with a familiar face. They suggested he use Soros and depict him as a Jewish financier with a secret political agenda: to weaken Hungary and then dominate it. According to some reports, this campaign fueled antisemitism in the country; however, since Hungary keeps no official data on antisemitism, the EU’s rights watchdog, the Vienna-based Agency for Fundamental Rights, found it hard to substantiate this claim.

During this campaign, Orban blamed all his problems on Soros and his “tentacles”—from the financial and economic crises that had hit the country to the arrival of refugees from war-torn Syria and other countries. In 2014 and again in 2018, Orban won elections, consolidating his grip on power in Hungary. In the run-up to the 2018 vote, posters appeared all over Hungary depicting Soros with the text: “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.” That year, the Hungarian government also forced Central European University (CEU), founded and partially funded by Soros, out of the country. CEU eventually found refuge in Vienna, from where it still operates.

As Birnbaum once said, “It’s good to have an enemy,” calling Soros a “good target.” Soros was defenseless. If he fought back, he would only crank up the rumor machine. If he entered the Hungarian political fray, Orban could accuse him of being power-hungry. So he did not say anything, and the rumor spread anyway.

Birnbaum’s father survived Auschwitz. (Finkelstein, who was much older, died in 2017.) That their campaigns featured racist tropes and fueled antisemitism does not seem to bother Birnbaum in the least. Once he asked an interviewer: “Can I not attack someone because he is a Jew?”

While Orban successfully won two Hungarian elections deploying the “Soros monster,” the first time he used this strategy to win a European election was in 2019. Posters went up picturing then-Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Soros, with the words: “You have the right to know what Brussels is cooking up!” Orban’s campaign then focused on migration: Brussels’s “secret” plan to use migrant visas to flood Europe with immigrants and Europe’s so-called attempts to prevent Hungary from guarding its external borders.

Soros largely kept quiet, but Juncker—who had once called the Hungarian prime minister a “dictator”—immediately began to refute the charges. He strongly denied Brussels was working on secret migrant visas or was hindering border guards. In short, Orban’s strategy went according to plan. His alliance won 53 percent of the vote.

That the Hungarian prime minister is having his attacks on Soros translated into English this time is telling. A Hungarian diplomat once told me, “Viktor Orban thinks Europe will either be his Europe or Emmanuel Macron’s Europe.” In countries such as France, where far-right politician Jordan Bardella from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is clearly the front-runner, the election campaign is dominated by a similar binary choice: Europe will be shaped by the likes of Macron or the National Rally.

Now that several far-right parties in different countries do not want to leave the EU anymore because of what Swedish politician Carl Bildt has called the “BTP effect”—meaning, Brexit, Trump, Putin—they seem to want to instead enter European politics for the first time and attempt to change it from the inside. Consequently, they are trying to form coalitions to maximize their influence. Orban told a party congress last year that Europe needs to be changed, not ditched.

Herbert Kickl of the Freedom Party of Austria, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom, and several other far-right politicians are starting to talk more and more about what they want with Europe: ditching climate legislation, changing the existing migration policy, and blocking aid for Ukraine. In the run-up to this year’s elections, the European center-right is already moving somewhat in this direction, just as it does in member states when it tries to prevent voters from fleeing to the far right. Several polls, while showing that the center will hold after the elections in June, have predicted substantial gains for the far right in several member states.

According to Paul Lendvai, a Hungarian journalist in Vienna who has written a critical biography of the Hungarian prime minister, Orban has Hungary “in his pocket, and Europe will be his next step.” He seems intent on using—or rather abusing—Soros to this end once more. Europe had better be prepared.

[meep-m33p]

saw ur tags on the overrated doctor poll and want to know what your thoughts are on ten grooming rose? not to be judgemental but just to Know (this is spacerelativity’s main)

We know the Doctor can subconsciously control what they'll end up looking like when regenerating (i.e 11 regenerating into an older face to show Clara who he really is and because it's a reminder for him to try and save someone no matter what, 12 regenerating into a younger face with a bubbly personality after he went through all his grief) So the Doctor made a conscious choice to regenerate into a younger, more attractive face for Rose, his 19 YEAR OLD companion. He was very physical with her from what I remember and again SHES 19 YEARS OLD. I know she's not a child, but it's still very weird. He got so attached to Rose and made Rose get so attached to him that he literally gave her a fuckin copy of him to take to the parallel universe she got stuck in. Something I will admit tho, I haven't seen the season with 10 and Rose in a loooooong time so take my opinion with a big grain of salt.

If you like 10, that's amazing, and I love that for you! He has some of the greatest episodes in NuWho and I still watch them today. I just don't think he's a great person (I know the Doctor isn't exactly the paragon of morality but 10 specifically did a lot of bad shit)

[13thdoctorposts]

Just remember when people tell you how bad the 13th Doctors ratings supposedly were and that she basic has no fans that even Legend of the Sea Devils, the lowest viewed episode of the era did better on its native platform the BBC in it’s final consolidated ratings for the episode of 3.47M viewers (so first 7 days) then recent big name and big budget Star Wars shows did on their native platform Disney+. 

Star Wars: Ahsoka Episode 1 Live+5 day viewership 1.2M households

Star Wars: Andor, Episode 1 Live+5 day viewership 1.2M households 

Star Wars: ObiWan Kenobi, Episode 1 Live+5 day viewership 2.4M households

Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Season 3), Episode 1 Live+5 day viewership 1.7M households

All this to say even if the era wasn’t doing as well as previous eras, probably because it lives in a completely different media landscape now then it did 20, 15, 10 or even 5 years ago doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a strong fan base. 

People who don’t like the era want to make fans think there aren’t many of us, but there are more then enough of us to make a really strong fanbase for the era, we just aren’t on Doctor Who social media where people are openly hostile to anyone who expresses any positive sentiment. 

They effectively silenced positive commentary with their 6 year campaign of hostility and now ask where all the 13 fans are when they get no push back on their opinions or 13 doesn’t do well in their polls which are in their echo chambers, but we’re here just not engaging with them and clearly not in spaces where they are going to be hostile towards us for simply liking a show, since they get so aggressive about their perception of the show you would think the show did something personally horrific to them or someone they cared for not just has some stories they didn’t like.

Lots of shows get less views then 13 era Who did and those shows can have really strong fan bases. With our own you only need to look at real world events like Cons where Jodie is always selling out and having massive lines every time she goes. Social Media algorithms are designed to help the most negative and outrageous takes to dominate because sadly they create the most engagment and this incentivises people to act this way more, so these people are just the loudest nothing more.

Sources:

https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2023/08/ahsoka-opens-strong-but-behind-star-wars-juggernauts-like-obi-wan-kenobi-and-the-mandalorian/

https://uk.style.yahoo.com/ahsoka-first-episode-draws-1-002927227.html

[manicpixiedreamdivorcedguy]

Poll analysis so far:

Harry has held a strong lead since the beginning. His position in the Divorced Guy Vibes category is very strong, stronger than his mpdg status—but of course this is the yaoi website, and as someone who has written Harry/Kim fic I can certainly sympathize.

Gilear Faeth, who I was not familiar with until I did my research for the poll, held second for quite a while until being overtaken by Jimmy/Saul and descending far down the ranks. My understanding is that ‘divorced dad who goes adventuring’ is Gilear’s core character concept, and much of his character is developed out of having Divorced Guy Vibes. I don’t have enough information to determine how much of a mpdg he is, but he was a popular tag on the original post by @everymanpdf.

Ted Lasso was the most popular tag on the original post by far, and yet has not risen past 6th place once. I am not familiar with the show, but have been told he is too happy-go-lucky to have sufficient Divorced Guy Vibes.

Kendall was losing pretty badly until I sent a link to the poll to @thealogie, who I knew to be a fan of the trope, and she made a passionate argument in Kendall’s favor. He holds third place now. Her argument was centered around him being highly divorced, and she did not make an argument for his mpdg status. I have not watched much Succession and as such cannot comment.

Stede Bonnet was briefly tied for third but has since fallen quite a bit. As a mpddg (in spirit) myself who relates deeply to Stede I am a bit disappointed here, but concede that while he is a classic mpdg who is arguably divorced, he has very low Divorced Guy Vibes.

Gale Dekarios has held a middling to low position despite being discussed in the tags frequently. I have not played the game, so I will leave the reader to explore the tags of the poll for more commentary.

Jimmy/Saul was my vote, mostly because I am a mpddg and I relate to him so deeply it hurts. He now holds a solid second place. His divorced status is not explored in depth, but he does have some of the vibes and is very much a mpdg to Kim Wexler, bringing mischief and mayhem into her previously career-focused life.

That brings us to James Wilson, who also received a significant boost from the poll appearing on thealogie’s blog. I have not seen the show so my understanding of him is solely developed through following Thea. I did not know that he wad divorced, and have not picked up much of a mpdg vibe from him, so I am surprised he is holding 10%.

I briefly considered adding the Doctor to this poll, but dismissed the idea. In my opinion, the category only (arguably) applies to the tenth doctor in season 3. I doubt he would have received many votes.

Very few people have voted ‘other’. I encourage people to do so and tag characters I have neglected.

I am definitely going to run a tournament once the poll is over. Very excited to see if there are any upsets. I’m even considering making some videos to help familiarize folks with the contestants and their pros and cons.

If you haven’t noticed, I am having SO. MUCH. FUN. Thank you thank you to everyone who has voted, reblogged, liked, and/or added tags with their thoughts. May the best manic pixie dream divorced guy win!

[spirantization]

Your poll has me equal parts riveted and horrified by people’s suggestions and responses. I hope you are happy

I feel as though I were innocently wandering around in the woods and happened to stumble upon my old fort, and when I examined closer there was a whole self-sustaining ecosystem with very strong opinions about the woodwork thriving inside. I'm FASCINATED by what's going on in there. I'm reading every single tag. I want to write a report.

I've been checked out of the Doctor Who fandom for a solid 10 years (yikes @ the passage of time). People have been calling my choices insane (fair) but they don't have all the facts, which is that I spent ten minutes scrolling through the list of DW episodes wikipedia entry absolutely blank eyed empty headed convinced that I had never seen half of them. In my confusion I sort of forgot that there are people who were introduced to the series through Eleven. Or Twelve. Or Thirteen. RIP to all the people who started following me because of this poll when they find out I'm a fraud.

"Vincent and the Doctor" appears to be the big one that people wanted to see on the list. Blood is being shed over the validity of including "Blink" even though it may end up winning. "Unicorn and the Wasp" is a surprising dark horse. I want to interview the people who said "The End of Time" and "The Day of the Doctor".

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I started rewatching the show, because it's been at least 10 years since I watched the early seasons. I do recommend it — I've been having fun, currently on Series 2. I don't know how far I'll get before the specials air but it's getting darker earlier in the evening so there's that. I'm ready for my Doctor Who revival era come November.

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Friday, July 28

Did you know that if you can't 100% commit to making a newsletter post the same day every week, you can swap to a different day as needed or even skip a week? Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more here.

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Dawn's Vacay by apachefirecat (Dawn, Spike, PG/K+)

Dead by apachefirecat (Spike/Buffy, Dawn, PG/K+)

Impressed by apachefirecat (Spike/Buffy, R/M)

An Amble Through the Zoo With You by cornerofmadness (Giles/Jenny, teen)

Moving On Up by apachefirecat (Giles, with many mentions of other characters and pairings, PG/K+)

Camazotz ("Stands So Far" Series) by madimpossibledreamer (Giles POV, not rated)

The Magic Of Motherhood by JamesTheIceQueen (Tara/Willow/Faith, M)

give them all that they can drink by eagle_eyes (Angel/Cordelia, T)

put on a brave face by bodytoflame (Tara, Willow, G)

Eight Terrible Dates (And One Happily Ever After) by Holly (Buffy/Spike, collection rated NC-17)

Monsters in the Dark by Holly (Buffy/Spike, collection rated NC-17)

A Mighty Woman with a Torch by fortes775 (Doctor Who crossover, Buffy/Spike, R)

Retirement by fortes775 (Buffy/Spike, R)

Video Games by eternallyec (Buffy/Spike, Xander & Spike, collection rated R)

Surprise Party by EllieRose101 (Buffy/Spike, PG)

[Chaptered Fiction]

Twice Broken, Thrice Burnt - Chapter 1 by TheClowniestLivInExistence (Buffy/Spike, E)

Encased by Sunshine, Ch. 20 by acb6293 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Through the Years, Ch. 27-28 by DarkVoid116 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

A Vampire's Guide to Dating the Slayer, Ch. 24-25 (COMPLETE!) by the_big_bad (Buffy/Spike, R)

The Art of Dying, Ch. 29-31, COMPLETE! by disco-tea (Buffy/Spike, R)

Because I could not stop death, Ch. 4-5 by Desicat (Buffy/Spike, R)

Vanilla and Spice, Ch. 26-38 by MaggieLaFey (Buffy/Spike, Adult Only)

The Truth Shall Set You Free, Ch. 8-10 by Geliot99 (Buffy/Spike, R)

Up and Away, Ch. 4-5 by simmony (Buffy/Spike, R)

Home Movies, Ch. 11-14 by cawthraven (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Hi Daddy, Ch. 1-4 by SzmattyCat (Buffy/Spike, OC, PG)

Moving Day, Ch. 1-7 (COMPLETE!) by mcgnagallsarmy (Buffy/Spike, )

Flukes, Ch. 1-2 by MillennialCryBaby (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Best Wishes From San Francisco, Ch. 1-2 by Kanita (Buffy/Spike, PG-13)

Roots Reaching Light, Ch. 1-3 by Lmrln (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

The Replacement, Ch. 1 by Melme1325 (Buffy/Spike, OC, PG-13)

What do you mean I'm Magical Nobility? Ch. 29 by KnightofTempest (Harry Potter crossover, Xander, FR18)

Healing After Heaven, Ch. 2 by Kate (Highlander crossover, Buffy, FR13)

Encased in Sunshine, Ch. 20 by Acb6293 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

Don't Fall for Rock Stars, Ch. 74-79 by scratchmeout (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

From Hell with Love, Ch. 4-6 by temporarytitle (Buffy/Spike, R)

Five Steps to Falling in Love, Ch. 1-5 (COMPLETE!) by Wojtekstan (Buffy/Spike, NC-17)

[Images, Audio & Video]

After making a 3d model of the Magic Box I decided to try making the training room. by sumyonggai0000 ()

Drawings: Can Your Pussy Do The Vamp? part 1-4 by Wojtekstan (Spike, G)

[Reviews & Recaps]

For reals, "Walk Through the Fire" has probably the most bone-chilling lyric set... by DiscussTek

Why does it feel like more thought and ideas were put into season 6 than season 7? by jdpm1991

I think this subreddit is pretty harsh on the comics by joebocop89

How do you rank the Buffy Halloween episodes? by nfw22

Best musical moment in the show excluding Once More With Feeling? by jdpm1991

Beep Me Pod | 7.21 – "End of Days"

Angel on Top - 5.19 Time Bomb on Stitcher

[Recs & In Search Of]

CharlieOak86868686 recommends a video about the networks Buffy was on

[Fandom Discussions]

Video: Is Glory Underrated? by RachM

Favourite Giles episode: a poll by nightshade

Wes - ingrained paranoia feeding his fear? by Stoney, Priceless

Poll: Which antagonist are you choosing to work for? by InfiniteMehdiLove

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[trekkie-polls]

There have been a huge number of famous guest stars on Star Trek over the years, so we're going to take this season by season and then have a face-off between the most voted in each series. Basically a bracket, minus the planning :). Each poll will have the same criteria: 1) they must be famous before being on Star Trek, 2) they cannot be a titled main character, and 3) when I can't fit everyone in I'm using my best judgment.

Below the fold I'm including photos of their Star Trek roles and a couple of things that made them famous before appearing on Star Trek... which limited my options to 10 names per poll (you can only have 10 photos per post).

Here's one article about some TOS TV guest stars if you want to read more about these & other cameos!

Frank Gorshin as Bele (s3ep15 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield) Previously the Riddler on the 60's Batman & a standup comic who opened on the Sullivan show for the first US Beatles appearance.

2. Ted Cassidy as Ruk (s1ep9 What are Little Girls Made Of?). Previously the voice of the Martian (Angry Red Planet), and Lurch (The Addams Family)

3. Julie Newmar as Eleen (s2ep3 Friday's Child). Previously Catwoman on Batman, and the android titular Rhoda on My Living Doll (the character who inspired Seven of Nine's name)

4. Ricardo Montálban as Khan Noonien Singh (s1ep24 Space Seed & Star Trek II). Ricardo has a long career, starting with musicals and short films in the US in 1940-41. He moved home to care for his dying mother, and became a famous Mexican Movie star in the 40's, starring in over a dozen movies. In the late 40's he returned to the US, and US Hollywood. In 1949 he was the first Hispanic Person to appear on the cover of Life Magazine. He continued to star in many movies, TV shows, and Broadway productions leading up to his first TOS appearance.

5. Michael Dunn as Alexander (s3ep12 Plato's Stepchildren). Previously Dr. Miguelito Loveless on The Wild West and Mr Big on Get Smart. Also Considered by Gene Roddenberry for the role of "Spock" in the Star Trek pilot The Cage!

6. Lee Meriwether as Losira (s3ep16 That Which Survives). Previously 1955 Ms America, Catwoman on Batman, and Tracey, Anna Rojak on Mission Impossible.

7. John Larroquette as Maltz (Star Trek III). Previously Dan Fielding on Night Count, Dr Paul Herman on Doctor's Hospital, and Second Lieutenant Robert "Bob" Anderson on Baa Baa Black Sheep.

8. Christopher Lloyd as Kruge (Star Trek III). Previously Reverend Jim Ignatowski on Taxi (a character who cannonically loved Star Trek), Phillip Semenko on Cheers, and Taber in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

9. Madge Sinclair as Captain (Star Trek IV). Previously Nurse Ernestine on Trapper John MD, and Bell Reynolds in Roots. She was the first on-screen female captain in Star Trek. She later went on to play Geordi's mom in TNG - the 4th role in which she played Levar Burton's Mother.

10. Iman as Martia (Star Trek VI). Previously a supermodel, Cynthia in L.A. Story (alongside Sir Pat Stew), Nina Beka in No Way Out, Mariammo in Out of Africa, and Lois Blyth & Dakotah in Miami Vice.

[benoitblanc]

okay team which txf ep should i rewatch tonight

(i don't want to continue with the watch tonight because i'm still technically on hiatus and my next ep in the watch is oubliette which i feel as though i definitely need to be off hiatus to deal with properly lol. i am properly off hiatus in a week so i'll watch it then. i WOULD just watch doctor who instead but the library has been taken down from drive and i'm DESOLATE. i have the whole show on dvd but i am currently not in the same place as my dvds. yee haw)

(if i end up jumping ahead i will OBVIOUSLY go back and watch the others i promise. you really think i'd just skip the cancer arc? me, the number one angst fan? skip the CANCER arc?)

[boldlyvoid]

New Romantics | Part Three

18+

Summary: She needs help studying for her Case Exercises at the Academy, He needs a date for the annual Banquet... they just so happen to be neighbours who aren't afraid to lend a helping hand, or in this case, a helping kiss.

Categories: Fake dating, neighbours, strangers to lovers, mutual pining, Angst with a happy ending, Smut *as selected by my poll on what you wanted to read*

Warnings: Season 9 Spencer (no Maeve arc), Angst, kissing, drinking, police training mentions, case details, canon typical violence, self-doubt, autistic!spencer, age gaps (24/33), FWB relationships, period mentions, anxiety attacks, crying, misunderstandings,

Word Count: 4.7K

a/n: this chapter covers the whole week from Monday to Friday, thank you @awrfhi for making the gif I used here <3

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Monday morning she’s in his arms still, and then again on Tuesday; he basically lives with her when he’s not on a case. They make dinner together at night and they drive in together every morning, and they have had sex all over her apartment… and he loves her but he was tired when he said it and in a post-orgasm haze and he’s her best friend.

But he loved her— just not the way she loved him. She was sure of it.

Tuesday morning at 10:53 am, she cracks her fake case. They’re apprehending the unsub by Noon and then she has the rest of the week off. So she heads to the main Quantico building, she gets a visitor's pass and she takes the elevator all the way up to the BAU.

She walks through the bullpen doors and Spencer is sitting at his little desk with his head buried in a book. Penelope sees her first, wrapping her up in a hug that gets everyone’s attention as she rocks her back and forth while telling her how much she likes her.

“You are so pretty, and nice and cute, and your hair smells so good?”

“Thank you, it’s Spencer's shampoo,” she laughs as she holds her back, “I just wanted to come and see him really quick?”

He’s standing beside her and she doesn’t even know until Penelope releases her from her grasp. He wraps her up next, “why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

She kisses him right on the mouth, holding his face in her hands she has missed him too much to wait till they are alone again, “I caught the unsub.”

“No way?”

She nods feverishly, “yeah remember I found that stray hair on the crime scene? Everyone was fighting over why there wasn’t a sexual aspect and I was trying to convince them she was a women unsub when the hair came back matching our victims best friend, who also knew victim number 1.”

He’s so happy, his smile is the biggest any of his teammates have ever seen, he lifts her and twirls her around and no one can believe the sight. Spencer Reid the uptight, overly smart, always following proper procedure, Doctor at the FBI; was spinning his girlfriend around as he kissed her cheek.

“You are a genius,” he compliments her as he sets her back down and places another kiss on her lips.

“I know,” she laughs, “I beat your score by one day.”

“I hate you,” he kisses her again and by now they don’t realize they have an audience. It’s incredibly convincing to everyone except each other.

“No, you love me,” she whispers, kissing him again before they hear someone clear their throat.

“Do you want to help with ours?” Derek asks, jumping into the moment and reminding them that they’re in public. “We’re just doing non-urgent consults today.”

“Am I allowed?” She lights up.

Derek nods, “I don’t see why not, as long as you just tell your ideas to us and don’t file anything then I think it’s legal?”

So she helps and it’s the most exhilarating thing since having sex with Spencer. She’s in her element, looking at small details and making connections that even leave Spencer humming and ha-ing. She has a younger insight than the rest of the team, she’s exactly why they hired Spencer in the first place and now she was shining brighter than him.

But he loved it.

Every time she made a connection or she had a suggestion that helped one of them on their own train of thought, Spencer would smile at her like she hung the stars in the night sky. He was proud of her in a way she hasn’t seen in many people before, filling her heart with warmth and hope that maybe he can love her for real one day.

—

She was possibly the love of his life and the more he saw her work and the more he knew her mind; the more he fell. She walked around his office and talked to his friends as if she was always meant to be there, and a part of him really wanted her to be.

He snuck away to go talk to Hotch, closing his office door as he sat down, “what’s wrong?”

“Y/N isn’t really my girlfriend,” he whispers. “She’s pretending so I could get everyone to stop bothering me about dating, and I understand it looks like she’s using me to get close to the team but I really do think she would be an excellent asset to the unit even if she was just in the office—“

“Reid,” Hotch cuts him off and a smile builds. “I already sent her an offer to take Anderson's job while he’s out on paternity leave.”

“Oh,” he smiles to himself. “Pretend I never said anything.”

“It stays in these 4 walls, don’t worry,” Hotch smiles back, “but you should tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That you’re in love with her.”

“I’m not,” he lies, “really, I do love her but I’m not in love with her, there is a difference.”

“I know,” Hotch reminds him. “Did you know that I only joined the school musical to get close to Haley? I did whatever I could to get her to fall in love with me and didn’t even realize it when she did because I was so worried she didn’t.”

“Oh.”

Hotch nods with another smile, “you don’t have to tell her until you’re ready, obviously, but you should tell her before it’s too late.”

“I will,” he whispers. “Thanks, Aaron.”

“Why don’t you guys head out early?” He offers, “we could all use a day off with the people we love.”

When he walks back down from Aaron's office, Y/N is with Emily and JJ discussing how she caught her fake unsub at school that morning. She doesn’t brag, she loves to mention her classmates by name and verbatim explains how they helped her. She is a team player, a genius, beautiful, kind… she really is the love of his life.

“Hey,” he places his hand on her lower back as he slides into the conversation. “Hotch said we can all leave early if we wanted?”

“Sure,” she smiles, “actually, did you want to come with me to buy a dress for your thing?”

“That would be fun,” he agrees, wrapping his other arm around her so he can rest his chin on her shoulder and hold her. “Remember I’m buying it so don’t stress about the price.”

“You’re too nice to me,” she replies.

“I just love you,” his voice is as low as he can make it but everyone still hears.

She holds him back tighter, in a silent ‘I love you, too’ and they hear JJ and Emily swoon.

They’re quick to get their things and head out, she hands Spencer her keys and lets him drive to the mall so she can relax, she’s done a lot today.

She’s so quiet on the drive, she holds his hand like she always does and she just looks out the window, she’s peaceful and content with the nothingness of spending alone time with Spencer. They were always just quiet together, sometimes they laughed till they cried and sometimes he could make her scream but most of the time they were quiet.

“Have you checked your email?”

She smiles as she turns to him and her grip on his hand tightened, “what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, I just told hotch the truth so that he could offer you a job, but he already had before I went in there but he’s a good secret keeper, believe me.”

“Oh,” her smile disappears. “So he knows we’re not really dating?”

He nods, “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I guess we’re going to have to find a convincing way to break up for them and still be able to hang out all the time,” she worries aloud. “Because I don’t want to stop this any time soon, I hope you know that. I really like spending time with you.”

“I feel the same way,” he agrees. “I promise, we can just tell them we work better as friends and they might believe us?”

“I don’t think they will,” she frowns again. “JJ told me not to break your heart today, but I feel like if we break up I’m going to break all of theirs.”

“We could have a fake ugly breakup, and not talk to each other publicly for a bit and then be friends again?” He suggests, “Penelope and Kevin did that.”

She nods, still frowning. She interlocks their fingers this time and she holds his hand instead of just anxiously fiddling with his fingers. She really doesn’t want to let go, and he’s almost convinced she feels the same way.

The banquet is on Saturday, she has one last week of school before her graduation and then they’re done. He thinks about asking her, about what would be the best time to tell her he was in love with her and ask her to be his real girlfriend.

Maybe he’ll do it after the banquet? Maybe he’ll do it after her graduation? He just really wants to do it before she meets his mom. He wants his mom to meet her as the love of his life and his best friend.

He hated many things, but as he kept glancing at her as he drove he realized he hated one thing most of all. He hated that he couldn’t love her as much as she deserved, at least not yet. He wanted to shower her in love, he wanted to protect her and care for her, he wanted to show her off and make love to her and never leave her side.

It hurts, his heart physically aches as he thinks about that. If he had to feel like this to know his love was real, then the pain was worth it. She was always worth it, and he would hurt as long as possible, forever even, if it meant he could be around her just as long.

He held her hand tighter in the silence which made her turn to him, he had no idea he had been crying until she leans over and wipes his cheeks, “I love you, you know that?”

“I love you too,” he smiles but he can’t keep the conversation there, he’s feeling trapped and so he changes the topic. “What colour dress were you thinking?”

The quick-change makes her laugh, “probably black.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods, “I don’t need to stand out beside you any more than I already do.”

“What does that mean?”

She bits her lip, “some of the people in my class are saying that I’m only doing so well because you’re helping me cheat and that I’m just fucking you to get a job… just like I thought they would.”

“At the end of the day, we have a friendship they will never understand, we have great sex because we want to, you’re smarter than me, and the BAU wants you… so who is the real winner?” He’s always going to be her number one cheerleader.

“You’re right,” she smiles again finally, “as always.”

—

He convinces her to get a red dress.

She hasn’t had a pretty dress like this one since her prom and that was 6 years ago. She hasn’t been to a party or mingled with people in just as long, she didn’t realize how lonely she had been while chasing her dreams until Spencer came along.

He was one of the dreams. She saw him talk once, years ago on a school trip, and she fell in love with him a little, even back then. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to be him or be with him back then, doing everything in her power to get into the criminal psych degree at her local college, she just wanted to be like him.

Now she’s liked by him.

Every night he goes to his home across the hall and he does his own nightly routine before coming back to her apartment for the night. She’s too emotional to sleep with him today, she knows that if she has sex with him she’s going to say something stupid or cry after because being this close to him without being honest with him is killing her.

Something in him has changed too, he’s less scared to initiate contact, he doesn’t jump anymore when she hugs him or when she smacks his bum as she passes him. Now he’s wrapping his arms around her while she cooks dinner, and he kisses her cheek randomly when they’re in public.

He tells her that he loves her.

She’s confused and she has no one to talk to about it.

She lays back against her pillows and closes her eyes, she knows she’s going to cry soon, and she doesn’t know what to do because she doesn’t want to cry in front of him and he would be upset if she told him to not come back tonight.

The stress of the situation just makes her cry more as she stresses herself into another anxiety attack, much like the first night she talked to him. She just lets it happen, the anxiety in her stomach builds and the tears slip past her eyes and suddenly she’s sobbing into her pillow hard enough that she doesn’t hear him come back.

She jumps at the feeling of his hand on her back as he sits on the edge of the bed, “what’s wrong?”

She just sits up and hugs him, and he hugs her back and they stay there like that for a while. When she calms down, she pulls back from him and wipes her eyes, “my period is coming.” She’s not really lying, and he believes her.

“Does it normally make you this emotional?”

He’s never really experienced her mood swings, he has no idea what he’s in for, she nods. “Yeah, and I have really bad anxiety which just gets worse around this time.”

“And you’re not on anything?”

She shakes her head, “I’m waiting to get onto the good healthcare when I get a job with the bureau, I can’t afford to work and go to school, I’m glad I had enough scholarship money left to rent this place long enough to go to the academy.”

“Oh.”

She just nods, “I’ve never had much money like my parents have been saving for 2 years to buy plane tickets to Virginia so that they can see me graduate. They started saving before I even got in. I went to community college on a scholarship and I get a lot of money from applying for bursaries.”

“Are you going to take the CARD job or the BAU offer?”

She shrugs, “I’m not sure yet, but probably CARD.”

“Why?”

“I can’t work with you,” she whispers. “It makes me feel like I don’t deserve to be there like I’m using you and that all my work isn’t that great. I’m just Doctor Spencer Reids girlfriend.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, imposter syndrome is a leading factor in depression among child prodigies, once you reach a certain age and you stop receiving awards for your work, it’s hard to believe that you’re still doing a good job.”

She knows he gets it, he has probably said the same fact to himself to calm down before. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

She nods, pulling back the covers and moving over so he can snuggle in beside her. She holds him, resting her head on his chest and taking a deep inhale of his cologne, this was the love of her life and if this was as close as she was ever going to be to him, she was going to take it.

He kisses the top of her head and holds her in his arms at just the right pressure to calm her down. She feels so comfortable with him but she still feels like shit, she doesn’t stop crying, and he just holds her through it.

“Do you want to tell me what’s really wrong?” He whispers after a while, he sounds worried.

“No,” she whispers. “I can’t.”

“Is it about me?”

“Yeah,” she cries again, “and I don’t have any other friends to talk to about us and now you’ve told hotch and I have no one to talk to about how this is kinda stressing me out.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” his voice is still scared and she knows he’s going to panic regardless and just send them around in a circle of constant anxiety. But his tone is more apologetic than one fuck up.

“Who else did you tell?” She sits up, “I thought this was just between us?”

“I needed advice, the same reason you are reacting right now, you’re stressing me out,” Spencer finally talks back with passion and she knows they’re about to fight for no reason.

“I never said you were stressing me out. I said our situation was, but I think I need to sleep alone now, Spencer” she’s confident and stern even though she’s crying.

“We can’t go to bed mad at each other. You even said the mornings are the worst, we can’t hate each other for no reason tomorrow,” he starts to cry, not knowing where he went wrong and she can see it on his face.

“I just don’t have what you have, and I’ve always been trying to copy you…”

“What?”

She sighs and wipes her tears, “I have had a big fat, fan-girly, crush on you since I was 18, I came here with my class to watch you do a talk on philias and phobias and then I knew I wanted to get into the academy and I wanted to beat your record and join the BAU, and I just thought; one day I’m going to be friends with this guy and catch bad guys with him and now I am and I’m so alone.”

“You have me?”

“I know,” she tries to smile, “but I only have you and I can tell you almost everything. Like my biggest stressor right now is that if just looking at fake crime scenes for 3 weeks has made me this anxious; what if I’m not cut out for this? What if I get to a real crime scene and I pass out or—“

“That’s only human,” he presses his lips together, awkwardly, and very Spencerly. “If you didn’t feel like this job makes you hate the world and untrusting of everyone around you; then I would think you’re crazy.”

“How do you do it?”

“I open up and let people in, but I typically wait till I’m at my lowest; crying in my friend's arms because I don’t know what to do anymore,” he smiles again, wider and toothy as she smiles back.

“Thank you,” she can’t help but tilt her head and smile as her heart settles and her brain calms down a bit, “I love you.”

“Can I kiss you or is that too much right now?”

She gets in closer to him, laying back down on the pillow and looking at him. They’re closer enough to kiss, and she just takes a moment to look at him, resting her hand on his cheek as he wraps around her waist and pulls her in closer.

“We’re okay?” He asks with his lips right against her, his breath is hot and he smells like toothpaste.

“We’re okay, but no more talking tonight, okay?” She whispers.

He nods, leaning in and kissing her finally. She knows she shouldn’t be kissing him, she knows that she should be mad at herself, but she also knew that even just pretending that he loved her back was good enough.

—

He gets called away to a case on Wednesday morning, he’s too busy to really call her and he doesn’t text back. He feels bad about it but he knows she wanted space to think anyway, what he didn’t expect was for her to reach out to Penelope.

She’s in the office with her on Friday, tired of Spencer ignoring her so she went to the one place he couldn’t avoid her; Penelope’s office.

“How can I help you today, my fine furry friends?” Y/N answers the phone with a smirk, copying Penelope’s line perfectly, they can hear them high five through the line.

“Y/N?” Spencer is the first to catch it, “what are you doing there?”

“I came to meet Anderson and see if I’d like to take his job or not,” she teases, pretending she wasn’t there just to bother him.

Hotch cuts in, asking the question he needed to ask before hanging up, “not sure what’s going on at home but we’re too close to cracking this case for schoolyard games.”

“Yes sir,” he nods and looks away, retreating to the other side of the room to stare at the map and pretend to find connections.

“Crack this and you can go home to her,” Derek whispers with a smile, thinking he’s helping the situation.

“That’s not where I want to be right now.”

“Woah,” Derek catches it, “what happened?”

“Nothing,” he’s quick to get him to stop it but he really wants advice, “she’s stressed out and she took it out on me and I wasn’t very nice back.”

“You said sorry and you pretended you were over it, didn’t you?”

He turns away from Derek with a nod, he wants to come out with it and get it over with and he’s so mad and embarrassed he just starts to cry a little, “I don’t want to lose her.”

“How could you?”

“You have no idea,” he rolls his eyes lightly and scoffs, confusing Derek.

“And I won't unless you want to talk to someone about what’s really bothering you, but you’ve been happier since you met her and I like seeing you happy, and Savannah likes double dates,” he scolds him with a smile, patting his shoulder lightly. “now let's crack this and maybe on the plane you will tell me what’s up?”

“Sure,” he says, but he doesn’t want to.

However, Derek Morgan is good at a lot of things, and one of those things is getting Spencer to calm down enough to tell him anything. Everyone is asleep on the plane, it’s just the two of them at the back together when Spencer finally feels confident enough to say it.

“I lied to you, a long time ago… and it’s just the first one.”

Derek doesn’t look angry, “okay, explain your thought process. I need to know how this pretty brain of yours works.”

He smiles a bit, “I slept with Elle the night before she shot that rapist in Ohio.”

“You did not?” Derek's voice gets a little too loud and they stop to make sure no one woke up.

“I did, but you still always made jokes about finally getting me some lovin’ and it bothered me for a while and I never told you, instead I offered to help my neighbour with her homework if she pretended to date me,” his voice lowers as the words continue and he only stares at the table between them.

“Spencer, I’m sorry,” Derek apologizes first. “I didn’t know I was upsetting you, is there anything else I do that upsets you?”

He shakes his head in a silent no, still not looking at him, he can't.

“What happened between you and Y/N?” He jumps to the main issue, fine with what happened because he feels bad for causing the issue in the first place.

“We started sleeping together.”

Derek sighs, “you have such a big brain, you can remember everything she’s ever said to you and yet you can’t see that she’s in love with you.”

“She’s good at pretending,” he pushes it away.

“No she’s not, because she’s pretending she doesn’t love you right now; the same way you are and you’re both fucking it up for each other,” Derek gives it to him straight. “You have always been loveable, but you have a very hard time accepting it, Spencer.”

“Yeah,” he starts to cry a little more.

“Go home and talk to her and tell her the truth,” it’s the best advice he can give and Spencer knows it. “What’s the worst that can go wrong?”

“She does love me back but in a few years, she realizes I’m too much and she leaves me,” his voice is the saddest Derek has ever heard it.

He gets up from his seat and hugs Spencer, sliding into the seat beside him and wrapping his arms around him, “you have never been too much. You just surround yourself with people who aren’t good enough to love you for who you are.”

“She’s better than me.”

“Which is exactly what I mean, she’s not going to leave you, believe me, once you love Spencer Reid for who he really is, it’s hard to stop,” he speaks from experience, thinking of what could have been between them if either of them had tried harder in the past.

“She’s the love of my life,” he confirms, “I’m never going to love anyone else the way I love her.”

They get the word that they’re going to be landing soon, Spencer wipes his tears and buckles in for the descent, avoiding everyone’s stares and questions on the ride back to headquarters. He’s nervous to see her, he knows his face is puffy and she’ll be there waiting for him with Penelope, but he has to do it.

“Would you wait here, I need to tell her now and she might not give me a ride home if it doesn’t go well,” he asks Derek before heading to Penelope, “she was already mad at me for telling Hotch the truth.”

“Okay, sure,” Derek smiles, reaching out a hand for Spencer, “come to me when you need me next time, okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees with a small smile, heading out to find his fake girlfriend.

She’s not with Penelope, no she’s in the filing room with Anderson and the other temps all talking and laughing, and it sounds far too interesting to interrupt. He waits outside the door and smiles at her laughter until he hears it.

“So be honest,” Agent Camden asks, “are you sleeping with Reid for this job?”

“If I was sleeping my way to the top, don’t you think I would have picked Morgan? Or Prentiss even?” She laughs and it’s like someone stabs a knife through his heart.

He turns around and heads back to Derek, “take me home.”

“Okay,” he doesn’t pry, he just grabs his coat and keys and follows Spencer to the garage.

—

He’s really ignoring her.

She finds out from Emily that Spencer left with Derek, and that he looked rather pissed off when he asked for a ride. It breaks her heart a little and she doesn’t know what to do next, she just drives home and finds herself knocking on his door.

“Let me in, please, Spencer!” She begs from behind his door.

He opens it and looks at her with a puffy red face, tear-stained cheeks and swollen lips, he’s been crying for a while. “What?”

“What did I do?”

“You slept with me,” he whispers, “and I told you I wouldn’t react well.”

“Is it my fault you’re crying?” She asks softly and he nods, “do you want to tell me?”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, “are we still going to the banquet together tomorrow?”

“I really fucked up,” is all he can muster, crying again as he closes the door and goes to cry in his room.

She just opens the door again and follows him inside. Kicking off her shoes she crawls into bed beside him and wraps herself around him, “you don’t have to tell me but I am here for you, always.”

“I love you,” he says it like it’s the problem before he rests his head in the crook of her neck and holds her back for the first time in days.

“I love you, too, Spencer,” she cries along with him. They cry until he’s asleep and she’s just there holding him in her jeans and she’s really uncomfortable but she loves him too much to let go.

“More than you will ever know.”

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Ultimate Doctor Who Poll Round 2 - Matchup 17

Episode Summaries under the cut

10: The End of Time Part One/Two - 2009 Christmas/New Years Special: The Doctor is summoned by the Ood, who give him a vision of the Master returning and the End of Time. The Doctor rushes to the TARDIS to get to the past, but is too late as a ritual is completed to revive the Master, which destroys the building in the process. When the Doctor lands he is found by Wilfred Mott, his former companion Donna's grandfather. They chat, but the Doctor goes off to find the Master, and searches his mind for the sound of drums beating, which has driven him to insanity. He's gleeful to discover that the sound is real, but is soon captured by a billionaire's men and taken back to his mansion. The Doctor and Wilf follow in the TARDIS.

The billionaire has the Master work on a medical device that he believes can bring immortality. The Doctor discovers two aliens that were the original owners of the device working in secret at the mansion. They share that the device actually heals whole planets at a time by distributing a healthy genetic template across an entire population. The Doctor runs to stop the Master, but he has already escaped and entered the device, transmitting a signal to turn every human on the planet into himself. The Doctor is able to protect Wilf from this.

Elsewhere, the Time Lords of Gallifrey are working to stop the Time War by implanting a signal in the Masters head as a child, the drum beats. They send a diamond to Earth in order to make the link physical. The Doctor is rescued by the aliens from before, who teleport themselves, the Doctor, and Wilf to their ship in Earth's orbit. The Master, and all his clones, use their combined focus on the drumbeats, allowing the diamond to come through. The Master gloats about this and the Doctor realizes he plans to bring the Time Lords back.

He flies the ship down to Earth, he crashes into the room where the Master has brought back the heads of the Time Lord council. Lord President Rassilon reverses the Master's transformation of all of the humans, and begins to summon Gallifrey into space next to the Earth, which the Doctor warns will bring all the horrors of war with it. Wilf returns to the Doctor and rescues a worker trapped in a control booth, trapping himself in the process. Rassilon also reveals his plan to destroy time itself, allowing Time Lords to ascend to a state of higher consciousness.

The Doctor shoots the machine creating a link, sending the Time Lords back to the war. Rassilon aims to kill the Doctor, but the Master gets in the way, attacking Rassilon and going back to Gallifrey with them. The Doctor is surprised to be alive, after a prophecy he'd received said his death would be after "he will knock 4 times" which he'd assumed was about the drum beats in the Master's head. As he lies there, relieved, Wilf knocks on the door of the control room 4 times. The Doctor realizes it is about to flood with radiation, which would kill Wilf. The only way to save him is to take on the radiation himself. He laments losing his life to save his friend, but does it, which kickstarts his regeneration.

The Doctor goes on a tour visiting his former companions. He saves Martha Jones and Mickey Smith from a Sontaran. He saves Sarah Jane Smith's son Luke from getting hit by a car. He sets up Captain Jack Harkness with another man. He visits a book signing of the great-granddaughter of a woman he fell in love with when he turned himself human. He shows up at Donna's wedding, where he leaves a lottery ticket as a present for her. He finally stops at Rose's flat, on New Year's Day before she first met him. He then walks to his TARDIS and regenerates.

138: Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks - Season 3, Episodes 4 & 5: The Doctor and Martha land in 1930's New York City, where people from a homeless encampment have been going missing. Meanwhile construction of the Empire State Building is being overseen by Daleks from a Dalek cult the Doctor had encountered before. The Doctor discovers that the Daleks have been experimenting on humans. Those they deem to be low-intelligence are turned into slaves mixed with pig dna. Those with high-intelligence are selected to be turned into Dalek-Human hybrids.

The leader of the cult agrees to turn himself into a hybrid to test the experiment. His newfound humanity makes him believe that the Daleks can change their ways and he asks for the Daleks help in creating the hybrids with even more humanity. The other full Daleks turn on him and a fight breaks out between them and their experiments. The hybrid Dalek and all their experiments are killed, as well as 2 of the three full Daleks. The last Dalek escapes using an emergency temporal shift.

(Beat 119: Orphan 55 in Round 1)

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August 10 - September 7, 1968: The Dominators TARDIS Data Core entry

This story is always ranked very, very low among the original serials whenever a modern poll is taken. I don't mean to suggest that it's actually good or anything, but it helps to remember that this is the first story of a new season. As we ended Season 5, we were introduced to Zoe, a spunky, brilliant little ball of energy who took the place of the perpetually frightened girl-out-of-time, Victoria. If you thought Jamie was a fun companion before, wait until you see how he works with Zoe!

When Zoe was added to a cast already led by the irresistably fun Troughton Doctor, the production team knew they had a killer combo on their hands. So they needed a story that would allow these comic performers to really show their stuff. As a result, the villains and victims in The Dominators are just tropes for the main cast to dance around. The actual Dominators live up to their names handily, and their costumes are straight out of Shoulderpad City. Meanwhile, the pacifist Dulcians are shown to be completely ineffective, and are literally wearing lacy dresses. It's pretty appalling. But our regular crew have plenty of fun dialog and character interactions, and after all, that's what the audience was tuning in to see.

But there's one more important element to this story that may not leap out at the modern viewer immediately: those square little side-dresser robots, the Quarks! The show was now a full year past the Daleks' last story ever (heh), and the producers were trying to find a new monster that the kids would love and hate just as much as those venerable pepperpots. Somehow, the powers-that-be really thought that the Quarks might be it. So this was intended to be the introduction to a beloved new monster for the kiddies, coming back for story after story, waving those goofy little arm-guns around. And they never came back again.

(At least not on television. But just wait until you see what happens in the comics!)