Best Enemies

Hello, folks! I'll be your reccer for the next, er, week and a half-ish.

Today's theme: The Master in more or less ridiculous animal forms.

Title: Cataracts and Cascades (NC-17)
Pairing: Seven/Ainley!Master
Length: 3100
Summary: There are some things that can never be wiped clean completely.
Warnings: Sexxin, fangs.
Author on LJ (or Teaspoon, or Prydonian): neveralarch 

Why this must be read: War between the conscious self and the biological imperative is one of the great, grand, hoary old tropes of sci-fi and fanfic. We invent all sorts of exotic story devices for it: Alien viruses and sex pollen and so on. But what we're really after, probably, is a way to get at how our own capricious bodies thrill and scare us. What does it mean to have agency and self-determination when your desires, your actions, your personality, everything you think of as your self can be rewritten by a passing hormone surge, or a shift in the level of a neurotransmitter? The Master's wrestling mightily with this here. And neveralarch  does a marvelous job of conveying how that feels. What it's like to inhabit a body that's pushing you to be something new and foreign, the struggle to resist it, and the sweet relief of giving in.

Oh, and it's hot. So there's that.

Excerpt: "Such stains covered his skin and his clothes. He was still wearing the same shirt the Master had seen him in days before, but now only patches of it were white. The back of the Doctor's neck was covered in some kind of black substance, which confused the Master until he watched the Doctor wipe his hands on an oily rag and then rub his nape, apparently frustrated.

The new, odd urge sprang up again. The Master fisted his hands and closed his eyes, trying to ignore it. He was not going to fall prey to some sort of ridiculous grooming instinct. He shuffled his feet a little, working out the sick energy of the need."



Title: A Very Original Sin (PG-13)
Pairing: Eight/Goosnake!Master
Length: 6800
Summary: “Just my friendly pet goosnake. He makes a much better companion than a cat: just as independent, sheds less hair, and he's very hypoallergenic.” After the TVM, Eight acquires an unorthodox companion.
Warnings: Um. Goosnake.
Author on LJ (or Teaspoon, or Prydonian): x_los 

Why this must be read:  It's amazing how much of the essential tense, power-shifting Doctor/Master dynamic remains, even when one party is reduced to an undignified blob of ectoplasm. Naturally, any work involving Goosnake (the TVM included) is, almost by definition, crack -- and this fic is no exception. It really has no right to be all sort of tender and moving and stuff. But there you have it. The Master makes a delightfully bitchy daemon here, and Eight perpetrates the most terrible puns.

Excerpt: "“Now,” he clapped his hands, addressing the seething Master, who was draped across an alpine hat, a beret, a Prydonian robe and an overcoat, “I can put you back in that nice, warm tank in the medical bay for the night. Would you like that? Or I’m sure somewhere in the TARDIS I can find you an excellent stone to bask on, if you'd prefer—” he stopped. The Master, after hissing at him derisively, had descended the hat stand and shot off under the armoire."