#maybe i'm a victim of projecting or whatever but i dont even fucking care at this point ive watched series 3

[aq2003]

it is literally canon that Martha stayed with Ten even though she knew he didn’t love her back. she stayed because she was in love with him. you can think whatever you want in fan spaces, but staying with him for love is exactly what she did. Ten was an ass to Martha in so many ways during this season, I think he coped with being the object of her desire (and even bragged about it to Donna).

sorry i'm putting my foot down here. anon we are watching different shows because in the very first episode ten is uncomfortable and shuts her down the minute he catches that martha has an interest in him. he (as stated by david tennant) spends nearly the entire season unaware of her crush. "i don't think he's [aware of her feelings for him]. i don't think he'd do that otherwise. i think he gets aware as the season rumbles on" — but even then, he still has that line in sound of drums where he goes "it's like when you fancy someone and they don't know you exist" to her. you could interpret this in either one of two ways, either he's trying his hardest to ignore her crush and is acting like it doesn't exist, or he honest to god still does not know. and when we're talking about a character that has a famously long history of being not involved in romance or being unaware of standard romantic conventions, the fact that he isn't aware of how she feels (however long that may be, but we know it extends over a majority of their time together) makes much more sense than... i dont even know. going out of your way to make someone fall in love with you but the moment you think she's in love with you you go "what the fuck! don't do that! back off!". like??!? and as someone who has been the object of an unrequited crush from one of my close friends before, it's difficult to look back on this person without thinking about it or feeling guilty over it. this is exactly what the scene with ten and donna reads like to me; they're talking about the relationship ten and martha had and he brings it up bc it's been directly on his mind (he's fucking tactless about it but being tactless is like one of his primary personality traits!). it's one of the reasons she left him! it's the reason why he rejects donna initially before finding out she wasn't interested in him! i'm not trying to say that their relationship was healthy or that s3 ten did nothing wrong or whatever but god will you all kill him for the crimes he actually committed

as for martha, i feel like you're misunderstanding the point i was making about her and i already got into arguments in two separate posts over it so i'll just leave it at "if you think her crush is her only personality trait and the only reason she chooses to stay with ten is /thinking he'll eventually fall in love with her back/ then please get well soon". look at shakespeare code when after ten compares her to rose and says he'll take her back home she sarcastically goes "great!" or at the beginning of gridlock when she goes "ever heard of the word 'rebound'?" (i could write another long post about this line but that's not the point rn) - she isn't having a good time! she knows ten isn't treating her very well! but the reason she doesn't want it to be "just one trip" isn't bc she's romantically pursuing him (which is the point i specifically took issue with) or even bc of her crush, it's bc she knows ten is grieving—he lost his home planet, his people, his kind-of-girlfriend and just needs someone with him and SHE KNOWS THAT! BETTER THAN HE DOES! look at family of blood: she's asked why she's his companion and she answers "because he's lonely". she KNOWS he needs her and as a character established from day 1 to be someone learning to save people for a living i don't think it's a massive stretch to say that she's not 100% in it for herself. if you take the show at face value, it's saying that martha is straight up wasting the years of her life and isn't getting nearly as much out of her friendship with ten the way he is with her. this extends to multiple areas of their relationship. and forgive me if i'm being too fucking bold but "thinking whatever you want in fan spaces" is a mentality you treat shipping with, not "analyzing the character writing of a writer first and foremost known and praised for his character writing"

[autistic-ranpo]

RELATED however. that sounds like psychological torment taken to the extreme extent I see. :o what are the specifics of the like. simulation thing ?? I'm intrigued. how did Mars get access to all this ??? WHAT is going on that the cops / families don't know about ??

nickei's crimes are. well he's a terrible guy really. so the project he belongs to is called The Disinformation Age and its essentially just attempting to flip a lot of superhero tropes on its head bc fuck genre conventions sometimes yk. nickei is a product of the a.r.c. (ability recognizance causal) initiative, and he is one of five "operatives" (you get a different title as you move ranks); when together, the operatives are called the archangel division. the city is called iridium city, which was built on the bones of another city - quite literally, as there are metal plates supporting the foundation of the new city atop the crumbling old city filled with dirt. sometimes these plates separate and cause you to access the old city, where many people live; those are the slums, and those are called "the gallows" (the old city was gallium city). nickei and ren (the other mc) were both in the initiative together when they were younger and were partners bc both of them were super smart and powerful, but Ren - who wanted to be a soldier and never had to be fed the same propaganda - saw past the silver lining and realized what the initiative was doing (essentially kidnapping and brainwashing kids into being child soldiers with public approval) and became a villain in response (bc TDA plays on thee concept of a manufactured heroic system bc the heroes need to stop the villains but the villains only happen bc the heroic system failed them). nickei, as his former partner, was the one dispatched to deal with it. but Ren, however, came out victorious; he murdered his best friend. (unfortunately for his sanity and to his relief, nickei comes back to life a year later. if you can't tell, they have a very complicated relationship.)

OHHHH MY GOD TBAT FUCKS SO HARD ACTUALLY???? I LOVE THE WORLDBUILDING THATS SO NEAT

that awkward moment where you kill your ex-friend but he comes back to life a year later.... im sure we can all relate

mars has some Connections inside the government, mostly just her using her familys wealth and influence to fund the stimulation. her and pike actually met through classes, shes studying the effects of different drugs on the brain and hes studying chemistry so they got along well (he's actually the first person to figure out theyre being drugged, but everyones so out of it they dont listen to him until its too late)

mars basically erases her existence after pike and cayce break out of the simulation, with a brief encounter in the lab where cayce asks, in tears, why mars did this to them (i thought you loved me?) and mars explained that maybe she could have, but this needed to be done (you're a part of something bigger than yourself) and then shoots cayce, paralyzing her from the hips down

ofc cayce still defends mars, clinging onto that last bit of hope that if she fixes whatever's wrong with her, if she tries hard enough maybe mars will come back for her and things can go back to how it was (which plays a part in the investigation, cayce is a bit of a smaller celebrity for her music before the incident and her voice holds a lot of sway) but ultimately the bodies of the rest are never found and mars gets away with it, the victims of the bleeding hearts experiment forever remembered as only missing persons (which is insanely traumatizing for marys little brother calamity, because she was the only one in their family who really cared for him even after he came out as trans and hes terrified because hes always wondered if his sister went missing because she was also trans)