Best Enemies

I've selected three pieces for my first post, but what I'm really reccing is the author.    Remember storyseller on teaspoon?  This is her LJ Simm!Master RP nom de plume: savagestime .  She delves into the Master's head better than any author I've yet encountered, whether in her fic, roleplay threads (any interaction with salvagestime , who roleplays Ten, tends to be fantastic in particular), or meta essays.  My suggestion is to read everything she's written (conveniently archived in the memory section of her profile).  I have.  Many, many times.  A taste:

"Doctor Who and the Pirates, or the H.M.S. Magister"
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten
Length: 2,918 words.
Warnings: violence.
Author: savagestime 
Why this must be read: The Master is the captain of his own pirate ship.  There is swashbuckling.  And sparkling repartee.  And really, do you need to know more than that?  Starts off as fun and games, and then it gets dark.
Excerpt: Pirates.

Everyone loved pirates.

Well, naval officers weren’t that fond of pirates, but nobody liked the navy, anyway. They were boring and stuffy and fought for King and/or Queen and Country, which, while alliterative, wasn’t exactly the sort of thing the Master went for. And if you were looking for sartorial elegance - well, actually, that depended a lot on the pirate crew. But pirates did sometimes dress well, and high-ranking naval officers had to wear wigs. If the Master wanted to wear a wig, he’d become a judge or a lawyer.

The point was that pirates were so well-admired in popular culture that virtual thieves named their fine art of electronic stealing after pirates. For years to come, the title would be reused and reinvented, always harkening back to those great Caribbean sea dogs of the 17th century (As, after that, the various navies learned to actually combat pirates, and pirates ended up all selling out as privateers, steering far away from all the high ideals of living fast, hard, richly, violently, and most importantly, free).

And if the Master were to be honest, he’d caught some pirate films on the television the other month, and he had really taken to the hats.


"Against Nature and Nurture"
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten
Length: 2,299 words.
Warnings: none.
Author: savagestime 
Why this must be read: This one stands out in particular because it's done in the format of an allegorical play.  The Master (rather appropriately referred to as the Showman) monologues masterfully while the Doctor (the Audience) moves silently in the background.  The philosophy is delicious.  Read it.
Excerpt: The stage is mainly dark. A spotlight shines down, centre stage, on a rather eccentric-looking man. This man is the AUDIENCE, and he happens to be a long streak of alien nothing. Depending on what’s ‘alien’ to you, that is.

A second spotlight, to all appearances a light reflected from the main spotlight on the AUDIENCE, illuminates the SHOWMAN. He is well-dressed, well-groomed, and all sorts of other well-nesses that make him seem quite the height of sophistication and politesse. He is also a long streak of alien nothing, but he’s a better dressed one.

SHOWMAN: I’ve always hated all those speeches on human nature. He never used to do that. Oh, sure, he’d go on and on about the essential beauty of the universe, how it needs to be preserved, not destroyed, and ‘no, Koschei, we’re not going to rip the whole thing down, we’ll just change it up a bit,’ and ‘Koschei, let’s skip studying to go out and play at the shore,’ ‘Koschei, I’m going to work with Ushas tonight,’ ‘Koschei, stop pulling the wings off of that insect, are you mad? You’re worse than Ushas! At least she does it for science. You just do it for fun!’ Always nagging. It’s a wonder he didn’t end up my first blood.

"The Dynamics of an Asteroid"
Pairing: Master/Doctor
Length: 1,526 words.
Warnings: none.
Author: savagestime 
Why this must be read: The author cites this one as her favorite.  Personally, I like it because I geek out over the astronomical extended metaphors and Greek/Latin definitions.  (And for any other Holmesians out there, yes, the title is a Moriarty reference.)   However, the real impact of the story comes from the character analysis: a study (from the very beginning) of how the Master came to be so bound up with the Doctor.  It's powerful and utterly beautiful and I can't recommend it enough.
Excerpt: Once upon a time, there was a star. The star burned brightly, ever moving, ever changing, ever flying. He could not stay in one place, because he was too brilliant, too alive for that. And wherever the star went, he was loved, and whatever the star did, it was from love, and because of him, the universe was a better place.

More or less.