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best_enemies2008-05-04 08:45 pm
x-losfic.livejournal.com) wrote in best_enemies2008-05-04 08:45 pm
Discussion O'Clock / Anon Meme Update 2
Discussion Time, Anon Meme Update, Shipper's Manifesto and New Monthly Challenge* in ONE!
*Due to how I am a lazy slacker who only got this up today, the due date for this one is June 5 rather than June 1 as it would normally be.
May Challenge: Five/Ainley!Master
This will be our first forray into classic Who for a challenge. I'm aware that not everyone's watched all of that, but as we have either the uploaded relevant files or links to all the episodes on the page you'll find referenced in the Links section, I feel reasonably confident that everyone has access to Five/Ainley!Master goodness.
But Old Skool can be a little intimidating, so here's a breakdown/shippers manifesto for your convenience!
If you have other highlights/observations re: the pairing, please do tell in comments!
Five Era: Castrovalva • Time-Flight • The King's Demons • The Five Doctors • Planet of Fire • Caves of Androzani*
*Just for a second, and it's all in Five's head, but god, is he ever the nexus of the emotional arc in that one
Fanfiction Recommendations:
Here's a not-completely-comprehensive list of all the Five/Master fic on lj. Most of which is Ainley!Master.
If you know any good Five/Ainley!Master fic you'd like to specifically pimp, please comment with FANFICTION REC in the subject line and link to it with at least one full sentence on:
1) what it captures well about the pairing, and
2) why it's good.
Thus we can learn from people who've got good stuff going on, the better to write our own fic, and get some good reading material.
Anon Meme (PLEASE tell me if I've missed anything!)
Fresh Meat!
Someone write Five getting crackily nursed back from a flu by Ainley!Master. Chicken soup, the works. Bonus points for, y'know, sex.
Pregnant!Girl!Master
Ten creates his own Shalka!Master post-LotTL.
The twisted inverse of the above: Master/One of the Doctor's (hypnotised?) companions, the Doctor forced to watch. (REVISED, WITH A NEW FOLLOW-UP)
Five/Master or Three/Master - the Master gets hurt and the Doctor comforts.
Any classic incarnations of D/M: Drugs. They could be stupid!drunk, or one could have dosed up the other--I'd take sex pollen! (TWO RESPONSES)
Three/Ainley!Master, locked-up or imprisoned together. Bonus if it's post-Five Doctors.
Prompts in Search of a Little Looove
Good old fashioned hate sex for classic who.
*Due to how I am a lazy slacker who only got this up today, the due date for this one is June 5 rather than June 1 as it would normally be.
May Challenge: Five/Ainley!Master
This will be our first forray into classic Who for a challenge. I'm aware that not everyone's watched all of that, but as we have either the uploaded relevant files or links to all the episodes on the page you'll find referenced in the Links section, I feel reasonably confident that everyone has access to Five/Ainley!Master goodness.
But Old Skool can be a little intimidating, so here's a breakdown/shippers manifesto for your convenience!
If you have other highlights/observations re: the pairing, please do tell in comments!
Five Era: Castrovalva • Time-Flight • The King's Demons • The Five Doctors • Planet of Fire • Caves of Androzani*
*Just for a second, and it's all in Five's head, but god, is he ever the nexus of the emotional arc in that one
Episode Highlights:
After the Master pushes the fourth Doctor off a radio tower, he regenerates into the fifth Doctor.
The Master also has a fresh new look! And just in time for spring!
A generation of fangirls can't be wrong: not too shabby!
The natural devolution of any encounter between them. (thanks![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
undersea) Theirloveissoflipbook.
Castrovalva: Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
* The Master is not even slightly upset about the Doctor escaping a pretty deadly trap he's laid for him. He even seems to have counted on the Doctor coming through fine. For lo, he has built him a better trap, so obsessively elaborate that it's clear he wanted to get some use out of it.
* The Master, disguised as the Portreve, shows off the nifty tapestry covering the mechanism powering Castrovalva, a psychic projection so complete that it functions as a city peopled by beings with independent will who don't know they're nothing more than constructs. He deeply needs the Doctor to appreciate the whole scheme, and considering the amount of work that's gone into it, he may have a point.
* It's worthwhile to note that while the Master has the Doctor in his grasp, unconscious with medicine he dosed him with himself, sick as a dog from regeneration, overnight, he does nothing to harm defenseless!Doctor. Before he finally kills the Doctor he tries desperately to claw open the coffin-like cabinet holding him to see his face one last time (screaming "I must see him!"). It is so Hamlet/Ophelia you could choke on it.
* Trapped in the collapsing construction of him own mind, the Master's last line (directed at the Doctor as his own phantoms claw at him and drag him down) is a screamed out "Don't leave me!" If that doesn't give you chills, you lack slash soul. It also implies a trust in the Doctor's inherent goodness and willingness to save him that will crop up in all their interactions in this incarnation.
* Also: Tegan should have taken art history at uni. Much gratuitous Master flailing over the prone Doctor would have been avoided.
Time-Flight: Kalid? Really? WTF.
I warn you that I am a poor, poor person to sell Time-Flight. I do not really recommend this episode. It annoys the living crap out of me. But it is not entirely devoid of slashy goodness.
* The Doctor's wide-eyed terror when he thinks the Master's beaten him is pretty priceless.
* The Master has a moment of utter cuteness attempting to make the Doctor's TARDIS work for him, slamming what looks to be a joystick angrily and growling in a fit of pique.
* When he and the Doctor exchange components as part of an elaborate negotiation too tedious to summarize here, the Master doesn't want to say goodbye, but rather au revoir. Five fidgets adorably at the suggestion that they will be meeting again. The Master's leer is Poignant.
* The Doctor attempts to delegate punishing the Master to another species because he doesn't want to do it himself.
The King's Demons: The only way they will ever agree to a threesome.
* The Master is interfering with the Magna Carta, for no other reason than to annoy the Doctor. No. Really.
* And he's brought a present! A shape changing warrior robot! The Doctor and the Master take turns ("Can anyone play?" in a silky, debauched-choirboy tone--thanks Five) making it look like each other. When we cut back to them they're standing in different positions. Like, across the room different positions. ...um.
* They fence! The Master says the Doctor's "always been my greatest stimulation, but now you inspire me!" The King appears to shove the Master in an iron maiden and the Doctor begs for his life, looking devastated when his effort fails.
* The Doctor and the Master invade each other's personal space, stepping within inches of each other to breathe threats into each other's mouths. Five's 'at a loss yet very turned on' expression is niiiiice.
The Five Doctors: I can't live without you. Bitch.
* Is there anyone on Gallifrey who doesn't know those two have a History? The High Council calls the Master in to save the Doctor's imperriled ass. All Five of them. The Master laughs hard at the idea, but consents, because "A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about." So every time you've previously tried to kill him was what, love games? Who am I to argue with canon!
* Three recognizes the Master in a literal-not-just-regeneration different body. Immediately. From a distance. Three proceeds to be a giant bitch to him, but someone is possibly a little more interested than he'd like to be.
* Five and Ainley!Master have a super-cute mutual 'Augh! Cybermen! Run away!' moment, after Five and he trade a Lewis Carrol joke and some good Longing Glancesof Rassilon.
* The Master saves the first Doctor from a troop of Cybermen with hopskotch, and tells the Doctor how to figure out the Tomb of Rassilon's puzzle with a pun about pie. He gets enormously offended with the first Doctor doesn't recognize him in this form. "Believe it or not we were at school together. *GLARE*"
* After the Doctor mocks and rejects his efforts to save his asses, the Master decides to take the Sooper Special Thing of Rassilon andmake them love him! gain immortality, just to show the Doctors! If you're wondering why no one's ever written the dark fic wherein this works and he winds up with a Doctor-harem, so am I.
Planet of Fire: Burn, baby, burn. Disco Inferno?
* Tiny!Master is only a few inches tall due to a tragic weapons malfunction. LULZ. The Doctor finds this discreetly hilarious.
* Regular Size!Stolen Android Body!Master menaces imprisoned!Doctor, grabbing the bars of his cell and sneering at him, pressing very close. ...it is pretty unequivocally hot.
* Again in the interesting interplay of trust between them, the Master, trapped in a fire, expects the Doctor to save him, going so far as to promise him anything in creation when the Doctor seems to hesitate. The Doctor lets him die (or so he thinks), looking absolutely shell-shocked (scarily detached/catatonic), starring at the space the Master had occupied for a long moment before silently turning to leave.
Caves of Androzoni: An episode that manages to be entirely about the Master even though his face is only in it for 30 seconds.
*stolen from myself, so sorry if you've heard it before*
Last episode (Planet of Fire
) Five betrayed the Master, who exhibited a sort of desperate trust in him, and let the other man burn to death, refusing to help him even when he begged and briefly lapsing into a sort of glass-eyed catatonia right afterwards. Now we get a strong, harsh parallel. In Androzoni, Five and Peri are captured by an amazingly done villain who was betrayed by a trusted business partner, allowed to boil almost to death in the planet's super-heated volcanic mud vats. Five seems Pretty Damn Uncomfortable with this revelation. Guilty Five is Guilty. And very visibly still feeling affected by it, much more so than he was after Adric died. Five spends the first half of the arc angry and depressed and so, so sharp. The writing's great here.
He's determined to save endangered!Peri in an almost sickly desperate 'I can't cause another person to die/loose another person now' way. Then possible parallel becomes fact at the end when dying!Five, somewhat comforted by knowing that his friends would have wanted him to try to push through and regenerate, is undone by an image of the Master laughing at him (it's kinda reverse Mind of Evil), insisting that he should die. There's of course a doubling effect here, given the Doctor watching the Master's death passively last episode. The image of his face overwhelms all the others. Five then regenerates into the harsh, less emotionally vulnerable Six, stating that he had to change.
On a writing, plot, and especially characterization level, Androzoni is devastating. From a D/M shipper perspective, the episode is really rewarding in terms of amazing, intense emotional dynamics. I've said before this is the slash pairing that writes itself half the time, and in other episodes it does, but you can't surpass this level of well-done deep issues and relationship angst.
After the Master pushes the fourth Doctor off a radio tower, he regenerates into the fifth Doctor.
The Master also has a fresh new look! And just in time for spring!
A generation of fangirls can't be wrong: not too shabby!
The natural devolution of any encounter between them. (thanks
undersea) Theirloveissoflipbook.Castrovalva: Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
* The Master is not even slightly upset about the Doctor escaping a pretty deadly trap he's laid for him. He even seems to have counted on the Doctor coming through fine. For lo, he has built him a better trap, so obsessively elaborate that it's clear he wanted to get some use out of it.
* The Master, disguised as the Portreve, shows off the nifty tapestry covering the mechanism powering Castrovalva, a psychic projection so complete that it functions as a city peopled by beings with independent will who don't know they're nothing more than constructs. He deeply needs the Doctor to appreciate the whole scheme, and considering the amount of work that's gone into it, he may have a point.
* It's worthwhile to note that while the Master has the Doctor in his grasp, unconscious with medicine he dosed him with himself, sick as a dog from regeneration, overnight, he does nothing to harm defenseless!Doctor. Before he finally kills the Doctor he tries desperately to claw open the coffin-like cabinet holding him to see his face one last time (screaming "I must see him!"). It is so Hamlet/Ophelia you could choke on it.
* Trapped in the collapsing construction of him own mind, the Master's last line (directed at the Doctor as his own phantoms claw at him and drag him down) is a screamed out "Don't leave me!" If that doesn't give you chills, you lack slash soul. It also implies a trust in the Doctor's inherent goodness and willingness to save him that will crop up in all their interactions in this incarnation.
* Also: Tegan should have taken art history at uni. Much gratuitous Master flailing over the prone Doctor would have been avoided.
Time-Flight: Kalid? Really? WTF.
I warn you that I am a poor, poor person to sell Time-Flight. I do not really recommend this episode. It annoys the living crap out of me. But it is not entirely devoid of slashy goodness.
* The Doctor's wide-eyed terror when he thinks the Master's beaten him is pretty priceless.
* The Master has a moment of utter cuteness attempting to make the Doctor's TARDIS work for him, slamming what looks to be a joystick angrily and growling in a fit of pique.
* When he and the Doctor exchange components as part of an elaborate negotiation too tedious to summarize here, the Master doesn't want to say goodbye, but rather au revoir. Five fidgets adorably at the suggestion that they will be meeting again. The Master's leer is Poignant.
* The Doctor attempts to delegate punishing the Master to another species because he doesn't want to do it himself.
The King's Demons: The only way they will ever agree to a threesome.
* The Master is interfering with the Magna Carta, for no other reason than to annoy the Doctor. No. Really.
* And he's brought a present! A shape changing warrior robot! The Doctor and the Master take turns ("Can anyone play?" in a silky, debauched-choirboy tone--thanks Five) making it look like each other. When we cut back to them they're standing in different positions. Like, across the room different positions. ...um.
* They fence! The Master says the Doctor's "always been my greatest stimulation, but now you inspire me!" The King appears to shove the Master in an iron maiden and the Doctor begs for his life, looking devastated when his effort fails.
* The Doctor and the Master invade each other's personal space, stepping within inches of each other to breathe threats into each other's mouths. Five's 'at a loss yet very turned on' expression is niiiiice.
The Five Doctors: I can't live without you. Bitch.
* Is there anyone on Gallifrey who doesn't know those two have a History? The High Council calls the Master in to save the Doctor's imperriled ass. All Five of them. The Master laughs hard at the idea, but consents, because "A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about." So every time you've previously tried to kill him was what, love games? Who am I to argue with canon!
* Three recognizes the Master in a literal-not-just-regeneration different body. Immediately. From a distance. Three proceeds to be a giant bitch to him, but someone is possibly a little more interested than he'd like to be.
* Five and Ainley!Master have a super-cute mutual 'Augh! Cybermen! Run away!' moment, after Five and he trade a Lewis Carrol joke and some good Longing Glances
* The Master saves the first Doctor from a troop of Cybermen with hopskotch, and tells the Doctor how to figure out the Tomb of Rassilon's puzzle with a pun about pie. He gets enormously offended with the first Doctor doesn't recognize him in this form. "Believe it or not we were at school together. *GLARE*"
* After the Doctor mocks and rejects his efforts to save his asses, the Master decides to take the Sooper Special Thing of Rassilon and
Planet of Fire: Burn, baby, burn. Disco Inferno?
* Tiny!Master is only a few inches tall due to a tragic weapons malfunction. LULZ. The Doctor finds this discreetly hilarious.
* Regular Size!Stolen Android Body!Master menaces imprisoned!Doctor, grabbing the bars of his cell and sneering at him, pressing very close. ...it is pretty unequivocally hot.
* Again in the interesting interplay of trust between them, the Master, trapped in a fire, expects the Doctor to save him, going so far as to promise him anything in creation when the Doctor seems to hesitate. The Doctor lets him die (or so he thinks), looking absolutely shell-shocked (scarily detached/catatonic), starring at the space the Master had occupied for a long moment before silently turning to leave.
Caves of Androzoni: An episode that manages to be entirely about the Master even though his face is only in it for 30 seconds.
*stolen from myself, so sorry if you've heard it before*
Last episode (Planet of Fire
) Five betrayed the Master, who exhibited a sort of desperate trust in him, and let the other man burn to death, refusing to help him even when he begged and briefly lapsing into a sort of glass-eyed catatonia right afterwards. Now we get a strong, harsh parallel. In Androzoni, Five and Peri are captured by an amazingly done villain who was betrayed by a trusted business partner, allowed to boil almost to death in the planet's super-heated volcanic mud vats. Five seems Pretty Damn Uncomfortable with this revelation. Guilty Five is Guilty. And very visibly still feeling affected by it, much more so than he was after Adric died. Five spends the first half of the arc angry and depressed and so, so sharp. The writing's great here.He's determined to save endangered!Peri in an almost sickly desperate 'I can't cause another person to die/loose another person now' way. Then possible parallel becomes fact at the end when dying!Five, somewhat comforted by knowing that his friends would have wanted him to try to push through and regenerate, is undone by an image of the Master laughing at him (it's kinda reverse Mind of Evil
), insisting that he should die. There's of course a doubling effect here, given the Doctor watching the Master's death passively last episode. The image of his face overwhelms all the others. Five then regenerates into the harsh, less emotionally vulnerable Six, stating that he had to change.On a writing, plot, and especially characterization level, Androzoni is devastating. From a D/M shipper perspective, the episode is really rewarding in terms of amazing, intense emotional dynamics. I've said before this is the slash pairing that writes itself half the time, and in other episodes it does, but you can't surpass this level of well-done deep issues and relationship angst.
Overall Dynamic:
Five and Ainley!Master regenerated (or quasi, for Ainley!Master) both near each other and right after each other. They work well as a foiled pair/couple in the way that Three/Delgado!Master did and Ten/Simm!Master will in terms of having amazing bantering chemistry and a great degree of compatibility. There's incredible emotional and sexual tension between the two. This is thanks in part to Ainley's trademark* 'sexual molestation in a bottle' leer (always directly aimed at Five), his purring, insinuating tone, and his need to stand much too close to Peter Davison. Five in turn seems quite physically interested in him, what with the wide eyed glazed expression and bobbing throat.
They care about each other, but it's complicated by the Doctor understanding that Ainley!Master destroyed a good chunk of the universe upon assuming this new body, that he's willing to kill to get the Doctor's attention and not shy about involving others in his little gestures of affection, and that he himself came to be because the Master killed his last regeneration. The Doctor's capable of making desperate efforts to save his life in King's Demons, yet also of letting him be harmed because he can't justify to himself exchanging the Master's safety for the life of an innocent. It's interesting that the Master instructs his puppet to force the Doctor to make that choice.
The Master in this somewhat-madder-than-last-time incarnation veers from besotted (unable to countenance the idea of the Doctor's death) to homicidal. With an option on crazed stalker. And a tendency to cackle madly, because apparently the Master has an awesome sense of humor. But through it all is a trust that the Doctor isn't actually capable of letting him die (to the extent that he taunts the Doctor to do it with the Master's own weapon in King's Demons, knowing full well the Doctor can't, even when it's better for the universe that he does). A trust the Doctor betrays in the end. The trauma of letting the Master die seems to devastate the Doctor, arguably causing him to regenerate into someone more capable of surviving that decision.
That and the Master's redesigned his signature weapon to look like a big black dildo so he can lob it at the Doctor suggestively.
*tm belonging toprettyarbitrary
Five and Ainley!Master regenerated (or quasi, for Ainley!Master) both near each other and right after each other. They work well as a foiled pair/couple in the way that Three/Delgado!Master did and Ten/Simm!Master will in terms of having amazing bantering chemistry and a great degree of compatibility. There's incredible emotional and sexual tension between the two. This is thanks in part to Ainley's trademark* 'sexual molestation in a bottle' leer (always directly aimed at Five), his purring, insinuating tone, and his need to stand much too close to Peter Davison. Five in turn seems quite physically interested in him, what with the wide eyed glazed expression and bobbing throat.
They care about each other, but it's complicated by the Doctor understanding that Ainley!Master destroyed a good chunk of the universe upon assuming this new body, that he's willing to kill to get the Doctor's attention and not shy about involving others in his little gestures of affection, and that he himself came to be because the Master killed his last regeneration. The Doctor's capable of making desperate efforts to save his life in King's Demons, yet also of letting him be harmed because he can't justify to himself exchanging the Master's safety for the life of an innocent. It's interesting that the Master instructs his puppet to force the Doctor to make that choice.
The Master in this somewhat-madder-than-last-time incarnation veers from besotted (unable to countenance the idea of the Doctor's death) to homicidal. With an option on crazed stalker. And a tendency to cackle madly, because apparently the Master has an awesome sense of humor. But through it all is a trust that the Doctor isn't actually capable of letting him die (to the extent that he taunts the Doctor to do it with the Master's own weapon in King's Demons, knowing full well the Doctor can't, even when it's better for the universe that he does). A trust the Doctor betrays in the end. The trauma of letting the Master die seems to devastate the Doctor, arguably causing him to regenerate into someone more capable of surviving that decision.
That and the Master's redesigned his signature weapon to look like a big black dildo so he can lob it at the Doctor suggestively.
*tm belonging to
prettyarbitraryFanfiction Recommendations:
Here's a not-completely-comprehensive list of all the Five/Master fic on lj. Most of which is Ainley!Master.
If you know any good Five/Ainley!Master fic you'd like to specifically pimp, please comment with FANFICTION REC in the subject line and link to it with at least one full sentence on:
1) what it captures well about the pairing, and
2) why it's good.
Thus we can learn from people who've got good stuff going on, the better to write our own fic, and get some good reading material.
Discussion Questions:
The Rules: Be freely off topic and respond to any you feel like! Or none! Or just write comment crack/porn, since I had a lot of fun reading that last time and maybe you did too?
Think these questions are lame? I'm running out and we never talk about the actual questions anyway. Feel free to offer up some of your own in the comments and I'll edit the posts accordingly.
1. What was the Master's endgame in Castrovalva, given that he seems really hesitant to actually kill the Doctor at any point in the story? Are we looking at psychic ensnarement/mind control via the fantasy scenario? Winning the Doctor over to his side a la Delgado!Master's many attempts at same?
2. Did either of them make good use of Kamelion when he was on their respective TARDISs, or did they shy away from what that would imply/have Too Much Dignity for that?
3. Why does the entire High Council seem to know the Master's The Man To Call to save the Doctor from the Death Zone in Five Doctors, despite their centuries of poisonous rivalry? Most public break-up ever, or just because Borusa was their school principal and remembers the sexcapades, or what?
4. What is it about the situation in Planet of Fire that finally causes the Doctor to make that choice and deliberately let the Master die? Does he think it'll permanently kill the Master?
The Rules: Be freely off topic and respond to any you feel like! Or none! Or just write comment crack/porn, since I had a lot of fun reading that last time and maybe you did too?
Think these questions are lame? I'm running out and we never talk about the actual questions anyway. Feel free to offer up some of your own in the comments and I'll edit the posts accordingly.
1. What was the Master's endgame in Castrovalva, given that he seems really hesitant to actually kill the Doctor at any point in the story? Are we looking at psychic ensnarement/mind control via the fantasy scenario? Winning the Doctor over to his side a la Delgado!Master's many attempts at same?
2. Did either of them make good use of Kamelion when he was on their respective TARDISs, or did they shy away from what that would imply/have Too Much Dignity for that?
3. Why does the entire High Council seem to know the Master's The Man To Call to save the Doctor from the Death Zone in Five Doctors, despite their centuries of poisonous rivalry? Most public break-up ever, or just because Borusa was their school principal and remembers the sexcapades, or what?
4. What is it about the situation in Planet of Fire that finally causes the Doctor to make that choice and deliberately let the Master die? Does he think it'll permanently kill the Master?
Anon Meme (PLEASE tell me if I've missed anything!)
Fresh Meat!
Someone write Five getting crackily nursed back from a flu by Ainley!Master. Chicken soup, the works. Bonus points for, y'know, sex.
Pregnant!Girl!Master
Ten creates his own Shalka!Master post-LotTL.
The twisted inverse of the above: Master/One of the Doctor's (hypnotised?) companions, the Doctor forced to watch. (REVISED, WITH A NEW FOLLOW-UP)
Five/Master or Three/Master - the Master gets hurt and the Doctor comforts.
Any classic incarnations of D/M: Drugs. They could be stupid!drunk, or one could have dosed up the other--I'd take sex pollen! (TWO RESPONSES)
Three/Ainley!Master, locked-up or imprisoned together. Bonus if it's post-Five Doctors.
Prompts in Search of a Little Looove
Good old fashioned hate sex for classic who.
Valeyard/Master
Four/Master with Four topping
Anything Doctor/Master with hot telepathic sex.
Ten/Harold Saxon during those 18 months that Saxon was PM....
One and the Master talk about their granddaughter Susan.
Classic!Series Master-bation about Doctor. Oh you know it's canon.
3/Master phone sex.