AVEC SPOILERS FOR THE BFA 'MASTER'

[x_los]

Ah, the BFA audio Master: I will review it more fully inna bit. Suffice it to say I've been dividing my day between studying for the Kareinina final, taking care of Rachel and Mike's rats, dealing with the Home Inspection and listening to the audio.

Inspector Character: Your maid's hot. Do you think you might like Human Wimmins?
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: Um. No. I totally don't care at all. It's never even occurred to me to care. /Really./

John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: So you and this 'Master' used to be... close?
Seven: That's not important right now.

Seven: So the Master never loved or cared about anyone ever, but I think you could love this Jacqueline person. Do you?!
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: Um. I mean, not in the way where I in any way care? But she makes me laugh. At her more than with her. But I /guess/ you could construe that as a positive attachment?
Seven: *construes hard*
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: Hey, Re: my apparently never having loved or cared for anyone. That seems kind of... not true, given that whole thing earlier where when we were children I killed someone just for hurting you. And that whole thing where we ran around loling in the flashback and seemed to be planning to run away together in a Hetero Man-Love Not Eloping At All Totally Cousins or Something...Okay, Having A Great Deal of Sex way. Are you sure you're not being desperately naive or taking serious advantage of the frame narrative structure?
Seven: THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW. Look, a woman! LOVE IT!
John Smith!Fobwatched!Master: ...I think I understand why I have this lingering desire to smack you leaking through.

Comments

Re: Trying this again Part II

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

the fact that Death was his listener and didn't call him on embroidering the story for his own ends.

Well, Death has always been his collaborator in embroidering stories. She's the one who switched the memory so that the Master remembered killing Torvik even though he didn't, and became the one who had to deal with the guilt. Maybe she likies the Doctor's way of thinking about this story because it perpetuates the 'Doctor=Good, Master=inexplicable evil' that has served her so well all along. (Although, it would be lovely to fic Death's snarky comments through the Doctor's retelling - I suppose she doesn't make them because she doesn't want to be heard by the unnamed assassin.)

But mostly I'm just not relating to Death as a real entity. Note that the first time she manifests it's in the Doctor.

Also that thing where they're choosing between Jacqueline or John Smith was awkward for me b/c in choosing that Jacqueline live and John Smith die you choose that the Master live and kill bushels of people, and how they don't specifically address that bugs the crap out of me.

Yes, that seemed not well thought out. I mean, if John kills Victor to save Jaqueline, he's actually doing the what you could argue is a morally correct thing - killing the murderer to prevent a murder. (You could argue that if Jaqueline is revivable then ethically she's not dead yet.) Why would this turn him Evil?

I suppose the implication was that *someone* would be Death's Champion, and it would be either the Master or the Doctor, so the consequences for the universe would be the same either way. But still, didn't it occur to the Master that after killing Victor, if the nature of the Master is to kill indiscriminately, he'd probably kill Jaqueline as well?

And yeah, they both need to just talk back to this whole fate and destiny thing and say, actually, we don't have to be good or evil. But I can see why the Doctor can't. It points out what to my mind is an interesting and plausible character flaw: because the Doctor (and Seven in particular, although Ten's gone that way as well) has become so powerful, he absolutely *must* believe himself to be Good with a capital G. He can accept a certain degree of his own darkness, but not enough to really recognize his similarity to the Master.

My favorite line in the audio: when the Doctor and the Master are talking and the Doctor says that we don't let us understand what we consider evil, because if we can understand it that means that we are in some way similar to it. The Doctor's insistence in this audio that the Master's evil is incomprehensible (and saying he's Death's Champion is to my mind just another way of saying that) is, in light of that line, pretty damned infuriating.

GOOD use of dashing baby on floor!

Yeah, that line was why I had to make lil'Master female. Well, that line plus the prompt in the porn meme.

Speaking of the fic, do you think it would strengthen it or weaken it to give the information that the Master didn't in fact kill Torvik, and that the Doctor is letting her think she did?

I'll work on the framing device...yes, I think that would make it work better with the audio.

Re: Trying this again Part II

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Speaking of the fic, do you think it would strengthen it or weaken it to give the information that the Master didn't in fact kill Torvik, and that the Doctor is letting her think she did?

I think that would over-complicate it, perhaps, esp. given that we're spending all this time in the Master's head and /she/ doesn't know so why should we know? There's already so much info crammed into the if, I think that might lessen the emotional impact of her thinking she did do it/be too confusing to slid it in?