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[neosatsuma]

hey gang. reader of Posts here.

you see how the ALT button obscures the text? This is what every post with this setup looks like on mobile; on desktop, the button is more see-through until you hover over it, but not so on phone! While you can tap to open the image, it's an extra step (and then the image has to load...) and it's frustrating to do for, say, every single image in a web weaving post. What you as the post author can do instead...

BAM! Now the text is legible from the get-go, and still has ALT text for accessibility. All I did was added a little white space in the bottom left corner. and it only took about 2 minutes on my phone! I am. gently begging people to do this

[Image ID: two screenshots of tags that read, "#and I'd rather be doing something I enjoy than giving myself a repetitive stress injury scrubbing the shower". In the first image, the alt button largely obscures the words "than" and "scrubbing." In the second image, the text is the same, but the alt button now sits below it, so the entire passage is legible. /end ID]

[mathysphere]

Haven't done an icon set update in a bit. They're coming along pretty well! Got ~120 of em scanned and cleaned up, with maybe 50 left to process.

[glittergroovy]

teen idle · marina & the diamonds

[clarionglass]

archangel 2.0 (game master cinematic universe, part 8) | read on ao3

“Absolutely not,” Siobhan said when she rounded the corner to see Sam’s evil doppelganger coming the opposite way down the corridor. “Whatever plans you’re cooking up, I’m not in the mood for them today.”

Other Sam just shrugged at her. “No plans. Perfectly innocent, that’s me.”

“Like hell,” Siobhan replied. “You’ve already fucked with me once, I’m not believing that for a second. Why are you even here, anyway? I know for a fact you shouldn’t be filming today.”

“You people commandeered my home, not the other way around,” Other Sam said with clearly forced patience.

Siobhan just hummed in response, noncommittal and suspicious, and Other Sam tilted his head to examine her closely, then straightened, pleased with what he saw.

“You never really liked me, did you, Siobhan?” he asked, a faint smile of satisfaction playing about his lips. “You always had a feeling that something was off. You know, it's funny what the subconscious remembers, even when it didn't really happen.”

“God,” Siobhan bit out with an impatient roll of her eyes. “Fuck. Yes. I know you wiped my memory, well done you, you can stop fucking gloating about it.”

“Aw, you think I'm talking about that? Oh, no. You've seen me before. Trusted me, even.” 

Other Sam smiled, and when he spoke next, his voice was different. “Enough to vote for me, as it happens.”

“What the fuck?” Siobhan asked, genuinely bewildered, because that voice was eerily familiar. Though it hadn't crossed her mind in nearly 20 years, it used to be everywhere, back in her uni days. Political advertisements, news briefings, Question Time; you could barely turn on the TV without hearing it.

“Oh, good,” Other Sam said instead of answering, back to his usual accent and clearly pleased with himself. “I was worried I mightn't have kept the voice.”

“But that was—” Siobhan began, and faltered. It was English, for a start, pitch perfect in a way that didn't feel like a put-on accent. The range, the register, the cadence—they were all slightly different from Sam's, but somehow just as natural. Firm and authoritative, but in a friendly way. The voice of a politician you would be happy to vote for. The voice of a politician she had voted for, in fact, seventeen years ago. 

“That was Harold Saxon,” she said in disbelief. “You can't—no. Do you mimic voices, or—”

“Oh, no,” Other Sam replied cheerfully. “That was me. He was me.”

Siobhan just looked at him flatly. “You can't expect me to believe that.”

“Believe me or not, it's true,” he said. “It's a fun little thing called regeneration.”

Siobhan's eyes narrowed. “And what's that?”

Other Sam mustn't have been expecting her to call him on that, or had revealed more than he planned to, because to Siobhan's private delight, he looked suddenly uncomfortable. He folded his arms, closing himself off—but even so, was unable to fully hide his unease, fingers tapping out a restless tic on his upper arm. 

“Quirk of Time Lord biology,” he answered shortly. 

“You're not getting away with a half-arsed answer like that,” she snapped back. “What does it mean?”

He paused, weighing his words carefully, even as the jitters in his fingers betrayed him. “We don't die,” he said slowly. “Or, we do, but… it's not permanent death. We change.”

“Change what?”

Another pause, another careful consideration of how much to reveal; silence, except for that faint, almost imperceptible tapping.

“Everything,” he replied eventually. “Face, body, even the way we think, to an extent. Every single cell, overwritten.”

“Bullshit,” Siobhan breathed. But—it was just something to say. Deep in her heart, she believed him. 

Other Sam just shook his head. “I was Harold Saxon,” he said—not an insistence, but a fact, solid as stone. “You knew me, Siobhan. The whole world did.”

It was too much to be true, but it couldn't be a lie. She felt the disquiet building in the pit of her stomach, felt her own knotted fingers start to fidget, drumming out a quiet rhythm.

“Why?” she asked. “Harold Saxon was PM for a couple of days, then had some kind of mental break and was never seen again. What did you have to gain from doing that?”

“That's only what happened the second time round,” he said softly. “The first time was much more interesting.”

Something didn't feel right. The world felt unstable, like at any minute, the wallpaper that was the backdrop to reality would start to sag and peel. But Other Sam had the answers, it seemed. And there was security in knowledge. 

“What do you mean?” Siobhan asked.

“You know what happened,” Other Sam said. “Even if it didn't happen, not really. But I can show you, if you want.”

“Please,” she breathed, and Sam's exact double met her eyes with all the gravity of a black hole. 

“Do you trust me, Siobhan?”

And the funny thing was, she did. Despite it all, despite everything she knew and everything he had done, she couldn't help but believe in him. Everything he said sounded rational, reliable, reassuring—a port in the storm. 

She nodded.

“Good.” He smiled, then, slow and broad, and she trusted that, too. “I'm glad, because this might be… uncomfortable.”

Other Sam pulled out his microphone from inside his jacket pocket and aimed it at her. It made a strange buzzing noise, the tip glowing bright, and suddenly she was bent double, clutching her head as pain a thousand times worse than any migraine she'd ever had splintered through her skull. 

It was like nothing she'd ever felt before, and she couldn't escape the agonising clarity as memories she had previously believed to be whole and solid peeled apart into two mirrored pieces. 

On June 20th, 2007, Siobhan Thompson voted Saxon in the UK general election.

On June 23rd, 2007, Siobhan Thompson watched the TV in the university caf as Prime Minister Harold Saxon shot the US President dead, and the broadcast of an apparent “first contact” suddenly cut to a black screen.

On June 23rd, 2007, Siobhan Thompson watched the TV in the university caf as Prime Minister Harold Saxon shot the US President dead, then looked out upon his domain with satisfaction as the sky opened wide like a mouth, spilling out millions and millions of bladed metal spheres that laughed with the voices of children.

On December 31st, 2007, Siobhan Thompson spent the night partying with friends, ringing in the new year with hopes that 2008 would bring nothing but good things. 

On December 31st, 2007, Siobhan Thompson spent the night tossing and turning in a fitful sleep after another day slaving in the labour camps, producing resources for the Master’s war to come. Her days consisted of nothing but work and sleep, with barely a thought to spare about what the new year would bring, but if she had been pressed to name a hope—it would be for relief. In one form or another.

On June 24th, 2008, Siobhan Thompson thought about America. It held the promise of a bright future, maybe a career in her chosen field of archaeology, or maybe any number of exciting new opportunities. It would be scary, uprooting her entire life to move halfway around the world, but oh, it would be worth it. All she had to do was jump.

On June 24th, 2008, Siobhan Thompson thought one word, the one word that united the entire planet. It held the promise of a bright future, the revival of a god and the downfall of a devil, the world unfolding with possibilities outside the confines of the labour camps that were all she’d known for the past year. It was scary, placing her trust—her life—in nothing more than a story, but oh, it would be worth it. All she had to do was believe.

Both timelines were true. One had been reversed when the paradox that sustained it had been broken, but Siobhan couldn't deny that they both had happened. Impossibly, the parallel sets of memories were carved equally deep into her mind and body, the life she knew existing side by side with the ghosts of trauma.

In the present, she looked at Other Sam—the Master—with abject horror.

“You can’t have,” she whispered, eyes wide.

“But I did,” Other Sam replied cheerfully, and god, it was a mindfuck, aligning the atrocities of the year that never was with the familiar face of a friend she’d known for years. The deaths, the labour camps, the slavery, the shipyards, the radiation pits; all to feed a war that would reach across the stars, and all masterminded by the man who now stood in front of her as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“And now you’re here,” Siobhan hissed. “From fucking… god-emperor of the Earth to just working at Dropout, huh?”

“Oh, all of that was the old me,” Other Sam said innocently. “I’ve changed. In more ways than one,” he added, with that little peering-at-his-hands gesture that Siobhan recognised from the Deja Vu recording. 

She scoffed. “And I’m supposed to just trust that?”

“You did a minute ago,” Other Sam replied with a faint smile.

Her heart sank. She had. She undeniably had. She’d let him fuck with her brain without even questioning it, because when he asked, she’d trusted him implicitly, even when mere moments before she was questioning him with all the suspicion she could muster.

Which meant, worst of all, that that feeling of trust hadn’t come from her.

“How did you—?”

“The Archangel network,” Other Sam said, not even bothering to hide his smugness. “Remember that?”

Of course she did. It was the best carrier, back in the day, before it went offline—shortly after Harold Saxon was removed as Prime Minister, as a matter of fact. She’d used it. Everyone had used it.

“Good, wasn’t it?” he continued. “A low-level psychic field, moving your thoughts to exactly where I wanted them. And even though the satellites were taken down, that was still nearly eighteen months of conditioning.”

“Fuck you,” Siobhan breathed.

Other Sam grinned. “Can’t do it across the whole planet anymore, but one-on-one, well, let’s just say I have a rather… magnetic personality. So if I give you that same stimulus…”

He began drumming his fingers again, and this time, Siobhan could see it for what it truly was. Not a fidget, but a signal, written deep into her subconscious seventeen years ago—abandoned, forgotten, but never truly gone. And she had echoed it so readily, she realised, had been sucked into the pattern without even noticing. Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap tap.

Trust me, it said somewhere deep in her brainstem, soft and insidious and unable to be ignored. Believe in me. And—

“Stop it!” she snapped, clenching her fists to still her traitorous fingers.

Other Sam raised his eyebrows, the picture of innocence. “Stop what?”

“You know exactly what,” she growled, holding onto her anger like a shield. “The drumming.”

He laughed, a bitter little huff of a sound. “If only you understood the irony of asking me that. But fine, if you insist.”

As she felt that creeping influence leave her, Siobhan let her hands relax, but not her mind. “Don't you ever try that on me again.”

Other Sam just pulled a mournful face. “But it's so much fun!” he protested.

As Siobhan glared daggers at him, he raised his hands, palms facing outwards in surrender. “Don't worry, don't worry,” he said. “I've got places to be. In fact, you've actually given me a very good idea.”

“No, no—”

“I'm leaving you alone, Siobhan. Isn't that what you wanted?”

“No, fuck—”

It was too late. Other Sam was already walking down the corridor purposefully, ignoring her completely. With a feeling of dread building in the pit of her stomach, she pulled out her phone and began to write a text. 

---

Sam burst into the editing suite, Siobhan close behind, to see his doppelganger sitting at one of the computers with a look of quiet focus. 

He looked up when he heard the door, and seeing who had just entered, sneered. “Oh. It's the cavalry.”

“What are you doing?” Sam demanded.

His double merely gave him a cool look. “Tell you later.”

“Hell no, dog,” came a new voice from the doorway, and Sam's double blinked to see Lou, still breathing heavily from what must have been a jog from the other end of the studio. 

“Tch. You, too?”

“Course,” Lou replied, looking at Siobhan with fierce pride. 

Sam, now fully inside the room, stepped out of the doorway to let Lou enter, which he did with a glint in his eye. 

The Master merely watched, one eyebrow raised coolly as the other man walked close, staring him down the entire time. And when a fist rocketed into his shoulder, hard and accurate, the carefully-cultivated air of perfect nonconcern shattered as he winced in pain.

“That's for Escape the Greenroom, you sick son of a bitch,” Lou said, shaking out his hand. 

Other Sam frowned, rolling his shoulders back with an audible crunch. “Fine,” he shrugged, the lines of pain in his face giving the lie to his nonchalant words. “Fine. Get it out, if you have to.”

Lou smiled dangerously. “Good,” he said, and wound up once again. 

The second punch hit Other Sam squarely in the jaw, and was even harder than the first. 

“And that's for everything you did to the world. And more importantly, everything you did to my friend.” He turned back to Siobhan. “Good?”

“Good,” she confirmed. Her smile faded as she switched her gaze to Other Sam. “Get fucked.” 

“Hell yeah,” Lou said with satisfaction, and turned to go. “Yeah, you can schedule me with him for shit now,” he added as he passed by Sam, who nodded.

With a click, the door closed behind him, leaving Sam and his doppelganger, still rubbing life back into his jaw, alone in the editing suite.

“I can’t say you didn’t deserve that,” Sam remarked.

His double merely sniffed, turning his attention back to the monitor.

“So. Now it’s just us, like you wanted, what is it that you’ve really been doing in here?”

“Getting you more subscribers,” his doppelganger replied matter-of-factly. “Isn’t that something you want?”

“Well—”

“Sam,” came the cool response. “Come on. I know how much you stress about those budget meetings, because you say it’s part of my penance to pretend to be you in some of them.” His mouth twisted, and he added, “I’ve been so good about it, too. Haven’t murdered even one of your board, and it’s been incredibly tempting. But you need the revenue, you need the profits, you need the subscribers.”

Unfortunately, Sam couldn’t deny it.

“I’m doing you a favour,” his double said softly, seeing the light of resistance fade from his eyes. “I’m not hurting anyone, it’s just a low-level psychic signal that nobody will notice. Subconsciously prompting social media viewers to actually subscribe, if they like what they see. And share it with their friends, and so on. It’s all for the benefit of Dropout, I promise.”

“You know I’ve gotta suspect you’ve got an ulterior motive, right?” Sam asked.

“I know,” his doppelganger replied. “But even if you don’t trust me, and you think I’m up to something—well, whatever that is, it’s a problem for later, right?”

Sam grimaced. “Yeah, please don't ask me to trust you. Siobhan told me what you did.”

His doppelganger just shrugged. “That was then.”

“She also told me what you did about ten minutes ago.”

“Like I said,” his double countered. “That was then. But I’m grounded, remember? I have to use my talents, brilliant as they are, for good. Or whatever you call good, anyway. The good of the company, maybe, and it’s definitely that.”

“Look. I’m only agreeing because I’ve got the Doctor on speed dial,” Sam said slowly, after a few moments’ thinking time, and he watched as a grin spread like oil across his double’s face. “Don't make me regret this.”

“Cross my hearts,” the Master replied.

---

missed an installment of the game master cinematic universe?

original idea by @ace-whovian-neuroscientist: x

art by @northernfireart concept: x scissor sisters sketch: x sam and his doppelganger: x escape the death beam: x brian and other sam: x

by @bloopdydooooo drawing collection: x

writing by me (!) part one (escape the greenroom): x part two (deja vu): x part three (sam says 4): x part four (you think you know someone): x part five (point and counterpoint): x part six (a selection of correspondence): x part seven (all good things should have a bit of malice in them): x part eight (archangel 2.0): you are here!

[enjoyvoidblack]

I have a lot of Thoughts about the issue of Jon's humanity. There's a lot made of how he's not human anymore in seasons 3 and 4, before and after the coma, and I could debate the usefulness of "human" as a term for morality and connectedness all day, but that's not the point. Regardless of the presentation, some sort of disconnect between him and the others is definitely there. By mid- season 4 he is fully leaning into feeding on the fears of others, into being something more of the horrors he knows than of the people around him, and that's not a shift that came from nothing. However. My hot take is this: I think Jon's disconnect both exists, and is also entirely for human reasons.

Up until season 4 Jon is three things. He is confused, afraid, and wildly out of his depth. His arc is a constant scramble to figure out what's going on three steps behind the curve, getting in too deep before he even knows what he's getting into, losing people before he even fully nails down what he lost them to. Tim sees him as uncaring because he's isolated and not acting to help matters, but that's because he doesn't know enough to help, and he's leaning hard into figuring that out instead of being around for emotional support - which is...debatably the wrong approach, but also extremely in character. One of the only things he took initiative on was smashing that table, and we all know how that turned out. By season 3, he's antsy enough with how little he knows and how little he can do that he shows up on Jude Perry's doorstep in the hopes that she'll be merciful. Point being: this man doesn't have the first clue what he's been pulled into, and the game he's been playing is nothing more than trying desperately to figure it out just in time for the next big thing to go less devastatingly wrong.

Then he dies.

Then, he wakes up feeling on top of it.

He says in the episodes after the coma that he feels revitalized. He feels in control. He finally feels like he fits with all of this. He is more of what's happening around him than he is a victim now, and that feels good. He can escape the coffin, he can square up with Jarod, he is self-assured and has tools of his own to truly know things for the first time in years. Just imagine that for a second. Imagine the most uncertain, most uneasy, most fearful time in your life, stretched over years feeling like people you know (or you!) (or the whole world!) are going to die if you can't solve a puzzle you don't even know the shape of it yet, and then somebody takes off your blindfold. You don't have to feel around for the pieces anymore. You can just see them, and move them.

Of course you're going to reach for them. Of course you're going to take the first sense of real control you've felt in years and lean into it. ...Maybe, depending on who you are and whether you have anyone around you who's willing to check you, even if you break a few eggs to make an omelette along the way. Even if those eggs are people who see you in their sleep and wake up screaming. Especially if you've spent those last few years absorbing every minute of your predecessor's recorded words on the importance of being ruthless in order to save the world.

Jon didn't start leaning into his abilities regardless of the cost because he's a monster. Jon did that because he's human, and scared, and then handed a means of relieving that fear. Better to be a wolf than a sheep. Better still, if you can convince yourself (with the help of some Classic Elias Manipulation) that it's for the good of the world, and any harm caused and the discomfort it causes you is a sacrifice that needs to be made. Jon makes sense, to me. In my mind he doesn't need to be a monster in some ambiguously defined sense to explain his shift in attitude. The explanation is there in full: a man in a rowboat on a turbulent ocean of fear, now given a motor.

(The fact that he was so consistently called a monster by Basira, one of his few points of contact still remaining in Peter Lukas's Lonely-flavoured Institute, also certainly didn't help his leaning into it at all, but that's probably an essay for another day. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing, and I'm sure being made to think he had no other options made it all the more easy to tell himself the same.)

[roseverdict]

now all the holes in my heart that you left behind

they seem to be the only proof that you had ever been in my life

but still i feel so empty, so broken inside

my heart is being ripped to shreds shattering again, and there is nothing left to fix this

edited jay ninjago into the 2024 donut hole amv for the lulz

[tubbytarchia]

Big fan of FireAlpaca's new free timelapse feature, except you can only export your timelapse in GIF format so now I have an almost 1GB 6 minute gif of me drawing block men

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

guys anyone ever think about the grinch. i didn't like the ending. just let the guy hate christmas why force it on him like that. what if his beliefs don't align with it. what if he doesn't want to contribute to the superficiality of consumerism on holidays that only serve to contribute to the economy. what then

[2sgf]

just had a gender feeling that isn't 'awful man-beast-thing' and im like woah where did that come from?

[honorary-fool]

finals stress is kickin in but working on emotes for Clover's been fun

might make one into an icon, that'd be fun...i got like 4 more to go from the first batch

[liriostigre]

💌

[glittergroovy]

TWILIGHT GALAXY · METRIC

[unityrain24]

please tungle why won't you allow levels of indented bullet pointsssss T^T

[evilwickedme]

Slideshows are evil and I should never make one again (I will probably be making one again in six months)

[wrishwrosh]

finally getting around to HHhH and feeling simultaneously sort of charmed and genuinely confronted by this reading experience……..mister binet what are you cooking

[roboticutie]

You cannot resist the whole of the military industrial complex, especially the US American sector, without holding compassion and sympathy for veterans.