James Wylder, Writer

A girl without her parents, taken in by a villainous group in order to serve their own ends. The girl has mysterious powers which enable her to survive, but also allow her new adoptive family to exploit her for their own ends…

I’m talking about Anisa Lagrange in the series “The Precious Sister of the Villainous Grand Duke,” Obviously.
​
The trope of a special child taken from their family and raised by another without their knowledge is an old one, with countless permutations. But usually, it’s a plot mechanism that allows for a few different plot points to play out that audience wishes to see. Such as the reunification of the child with the family they were stolen from, or the confrontation between them and their original family discovering there was a reason they were taken from them they didn’t know.
In “The Precious Sister of the Villainous Grand Duke”, a webcomic by Ikkamnu and Éclair, illustrated by Lunaheng, this child is Anisa. Stolen from her mother, Anisa was part of the Euclid family, and was born with a special magic power that allows her to see people’s auras and cleanse them, giving them a new chance at life. As part of the LaGrange family, this proves to be pretty darn valuable as the family pits the children to kill each other in order to determine who is going to be the heir, and to do so leaves items laced with demonic energy around their estate to poison their minds and souls.
Because Anisa can cleanse this, she’s able to survive without just doing murder, and changes the course of the story--

DIVISION PROTOCOLS ACTIVATE
INITIATE INTRUSTION

INTERUPT ESSAY - DIVISION PROTOCOLS
Chaos: Well, personally I was enjoying that.
Order: This isn't a game, we already retold this story with the Irish Policeman. I liked that one.
Chaos: Of course you did, your name is literally Order.
Order: Well don't rub it in. Anyway, what exactly is the point here? I'm sure it's all a symbol for something.
Chaos: Does it? Can't I just spill out the toybox and let you step on the legos?
Order: Lego is plural, you don't add the s.
Chaos: Literally no one with a social life does that. Anyway, I say we let it proceed.
Order: It’s a pretty weird comparison though, I mean, a Korean comic? Manga? Manhua? Doesn't really seem to have a lot to do with this.
Chaos: It has everything to do with this.
/End protocol
 
Anisa makes a friend in Dietrich, her adoptive brother who helps protect her even as he himself fights and engages in the cruel machinations required to become the family heir to the LaGranges. He even begins to make pacts with demons, such as the demon Baal, who becomes quite the comic figure despite/protocol error
 
/error/the torn mask on his face. But the access to such corrupted forces allows Dietrich to go to the main family estate, and wipe them out, converting them into demons themselves. This fulfills the prophecy from the previous romance manga series about a hybrid that would be of two races (Lagrange/Demon) and destroy the family. It can get a little confusing though, because by all accounts that prophecy was already resolved, and now we have resolved it twice. But regardless, Dietrich is now the only Lagrange left, leaving Anisa to destroy the family to save them both, but this role is taken from her at the last minute by a character she's barely known, the old man from the Lagrange family cellar who had fled there after the death of his own family.
 
/error attempting correction/
/reversing time/
/error, attempted to reverse planet named time, now reversing concept of time/
The Doctor gets the idea to make money on Gallifrey by entering the lottery, and buying as many tickets as she can. This ends up being facilitated by the older Timelord the Rani, as she--
/error/
/end script/
 
DIVISION PROTOCOLS
Chaos: Sorry, this is all falling apart.
Order: Its a pretty simple concept isn't it, the essay is just comparing the two stories and getting them mixed up. Its a clever format decision!
Chaos: But is it? Does the format change actually add anything to the story here, or the analysis? It feels like we're cutting back and forth so much that we're killing the whole flow of the story.
Order: Why are you the one complaining here, you're Chaos?
Chaos: That's just my name. My mom named me that.
Order: Let's just reset the servers, maybe that will stop things from being in such flux.
 
/loading
/loading

​/essay start
Before the latest episode of "The Precious Doctor of the Villainous Grand Division" aired a British politician make the absolutely ludicrous statement in a speech that the character of Anisa becoming a woman was causing a massive crime spree in Britain. After all, if the heroine of a girl's romance manga can't be a man, then what sort of role models would men have left? This has been a big problem since the start of the series after all, with countless men online stomping their feet and screaming that they need a series starring a man. When pointed to the countless romance manga starring male characters, the criticism was deflected. It was never about having male representation after all, I mean, Dietrich is right there, as is her other brother Yurik, but about having a series starring a female character at all. Simply being a woman was the sin, which led to a new strange problem. The worst critics of the series were so vile in their directed attacks, that many felt hesitant to voice their more reasonable complaints for fear of aiding them.
 
Like the infection of the demonic energy into the Lagrange household, it spread, tearing things up in a flux till simply surviving that deluge became a problem.
 
And it never ends. That politician is only the latest in a long series of bad-faith complaints that all crash against the rocks with their paper-thin criticism and candy-floss strength analysis. But it does its damage all the same.
Even so, we now end up with a new problem: What if the story problems, totally disconnected from the issue of the sexist attacks on the series as a concept, begin to themselves pile up?
 
Part way through the series, it becomes apparent that Dietrich is in fact going to be the male lead of the series, that is, the romantic interest for Anisa to fall in love with. There's of course a big issue there: he's her brother. Sure, they're not related by blood, and it’s even clear that she's been stolen from her original family, but... he's still her brother. For many fans, they never quite recovered from this revelation, even though it can be quite common in the genre.
It’s still pretty damn gross.
Like, really? Her brother? Come on now.
 
//error
//refreshing paragraph
Part way through the series, it becomes apparent that the series isn't going to live up to the reputation of being woke that it's gained simply by its casting. While the show does some amazing work in diversity, many fans get put off by a series of creative choices such as the episode "Kerblam!" seemingly having an anti-workers message, Anisa using the skin color of Dietrich's latest regeneration as a weapon to get him captured by literal Nazis, and erasing the memories of some female historical heroes while leaving men in the same series with their own. For many fans, they never quite recovered from this turn, even though it can be quite common in the genre.
It’s still pretty damn gross.
Like, really? Using his skin color against him? Come on now.
/error
​
DIVISION PROTOCOLS
Order: But is that really a fair criticism? I mean, it really is just a time travel convention. Reveal the person from the future to be a liar and get them in trouble!
Chaos: Yeah, but the issue is they used his race, and used literal Nazis as a weapon against him. That’s messed up.
Order: Hold up, which story are we talking about?
Chaos: I mean, the incest is bad too.
/loading

But how does this all relate to Anisa Who: Dark Aura? Well, how do you deal with a follow up to something kind of gross, that starts getting better, but drops the ball in a different way? After all, this full series has been trying to tell one story, and when it works, its worked very very well. The Sontarans and Weeping Angels were good fun, and while it got mixed public reception I actually quite liked “Once, Upon Euclid” which I thought did a great job of balancing its new story elements even if some of them worked better than others.
But here in part 5, the threads start to fray. Because we’re starting to pay off things that the series has been setting up for a long time. But how it pays them off is going to determine quite a lot of how enjoyable the era as a whole is. And… while I’ve been fairly positive of the series, even despite my reservations about the plot involving the LaGrange family’s machinations. But here we are.
Anisa finally confronts her mother, the woman who picked her up and brought her into the LaGrange home. And how does that go? Camilla LaGrange isn’t a good woman, something we could surmise for her work for a secret time traveling evil organization, but we’ve barely met her before. The confrontation between mother and daughter feels like it should be climax of this whole story: after all, Anisa is the Timeless Child. She’s the one where the magic power to regenerate the auras back to purity came from, as we learn in later dialogue:

​Anisa: The Demons created the dark aura because you're scared of me? Of the Euclid bloodline?
Baal: Not scared. Wary, perhaps.
Anisa: How much power do you imagine I have?
Baal: You inspire. Make people question and rise up. You give them hope. Just look at Yurik and Veronica. That can be problematic.
Anisa: Who even are you?

But the confrontation with her mother is filled with so much explanation of the setting’s lore, it kills the shock of it all, and the rapid cut back and forth between the different divided characters doesn’t help either.

DIVISION PROTOCOLS
Order: Hold up, I think we’re straying from Anisa’s real story here.
Chaos: Look, it was never going to be a one-for-one comparison.
Order: But Anisa was abandoned by Donna Euclid, right?
Chaos: How do we know the Doctor wasn’t abandoned?
Order: We don’t! But she could have also been stolen. That’s the issue here, we get explanations of the lore, but we’re missing the explanations of the character dynamics. We know that the Doctor feels wronged, but we get far more dialogue about the whole multiverse-thing going on.
Chaos: That gives the moment focus though! And it underscores her own lack of knowledge.
Order: But shouldn’t Anisa meeting her long lost mother be more emotional? Shouldn’t this be the emotional climax? Why is this episode 5?
Chaos: We’re going to get answers next episode probably, we saw that Azure has the pocketwatch.
Order: It still feels like a missed opportunity for the Doc… Anis… which story are we talking about?

/error
/redirect

Which leads to the episode’s strangest choice: to kill off Anisa’s mother just after we’ve met her, completely vaporized by the demon Asmodeus. This acts as a cliffhanger, and it feels like it should be shocking, but we haven’t had the build up to it we needed for that. Instead, it pushes the plot forward, and the emotions of the characters backward. We’ll deal with Asmodeus and Baal next time, but we’re simply left with the unfulfilled potential of this encounter.
So, what is important in a story? Is it the plot? Is it a clever structure? Or is it the characters? Their emotions? The ties that bind them and separate them? I’ve never been a fan of this plotline, but it wasn’t because of the lore itself. It was because time and time again, it feels like the lore has come before the character’s actions.
Twice now, we’ve had a character lecture Anisa on her own history, and she just stands there and listens. Talks back a little, but largely has no agency in these scenes that are so important to her story. Giving us the knowledge of her life seems more important than making us care about it, and there’s a sadness to that, because when you lay out the events on paper the dramatic potential is obvious: a lady confronting her abusive and manipulative mother who stole a whole potential life from her. It’s a rich tapestry, just waiting to be mined. But it’s pulled away for a cliffhanger.
And maybe the cliffhanger is a fake out, and we’ll get more next week. Maybe we’ll get that resolution in the flashbacks from the magic watch. Maybe. But we can only judge it week by week for now, and for now, there’s an empty hole there waiting to be filled.
Filled.
Filled
Filed.
/Error
Of course, the Master was confronting Division, and only pretending to hate her so she wouldn’t try to interfere, but the Doctor getting between them and confronting her trauma through the visions given to her to save both of them allowed them to subvert fate and move forward. Where will they go from here, now that they’ve saved Lagrange—I mean Galifrey? Or Time?
So much of Anisa’s story involves memories of things she doesn’t know—versions of herself from past lives that she has to work through the memories of. Both herself, a girl from Korea, and the original Anisa who dies in the story. Not to mention the Fugitive Anisa version of the character who was hunted by the Judoon. Or the one who was a cop in Ireland.
So the real question we have now, I think, is which is going to be more important in the finale: the contents of the memories, or the fact in themselves that they were lost?
It’s a series of comparisons, an infinite set of alternate lives that show what matters. Whether its in the LaGrange manor, or the halls of the planet Time, the song remains the same in a dress or a coat.
What will her memories mean to her?

DIVISION PROTOCOLS
Order: Alright, enough of that.
Chaos: But it was fun.
Order: I think the format itself is starting to get in the way of the piece.
Chaos: We already covered that.
Order: I mean—never mind. Let’s just talk about Yaz and go home.
/error
/reloading

But what about the side characters?
Yaz, Dan, and Eutacius get their own big side story here, and its absolute rollicking fun. We get to see the group in period get up, get a moment to tantalize Yaz/Anisa shippers, and even get a fun moment with Dan’s space dog that’s pretty damn funny. Their whole journey is a real highlight of the episode, and shows how much fun this era of the series can be. A little more confusing is a side-plot about the Grand Serpent going to Earth and helping start UNIT, run UNIT, and then disband UNIT so he can invite the Sontarans to invade it. Maybe we’ll get more explanation next week, but there’s a certain amount of “A+?=C” to the plan. Why help found UNIT only to later get rid of it, and spend decades on that endeavor? The segments themselves are fun, and the Grand Serpent is a pretty successful menacing villain. Craig Parkinson was excellent casting.
Bel and Vinder are also there, as is Dan’s not-quite-girlfriend, and they mainly remind us of their presence for the finale.
The tunnels finally get tied back in, and it’ll be exciting to see how that all plays in together.
Its strange though, Flux has been made of so many strands. Next week, we will see how they all come together, and never before in Doctor Who has it felt so much like the way the strands come together will change how we reflect on everything before it. Maybe every grumpy complaint will be wiped away, maybe it will be a collapsing disaster. What if? We wait.
If nothing else, the serialization is fun. The wait to see what we think. Complaining, rejoicing. It can feel like its all a menace sometimes, like disagreements about the quality of a story are very important things. But it all exists in our heads.
And the version of it in our heads is the one that matters. Those precious memories, whether good or bad, form us and shape us. And I’ll certainly remember this series. And hopefully, unlike the Doctor and Anisa, your past will remain with you.
And if it doesn’t, I hope you find the story of you somewhere and can find something that matters to you in it.
After all, Tapas has regular updates of newly translated chapters.
/end Division Simulation
/begin memory deletion protocol
/see you next week

Images are taken and used in a transformative and moderate mannter from "The Precious Sister of the Villainous Grand Duke" also known as "Villain Duke's Precious One"
Authors: Ikkamnu / Eclair
Artists: Lunaheng

You can read the story here (its good!):
https://tapas.io/series/villain-dukes-precious-one/

Going back to one of the most revered things in a franchise is always tough for a creator. You can just repeat the greatest hits of it, but you'll end up with something crowd-pleasing but whose sheen fades as soon as the newness wears off, and people have the option between choosing between it and the original. The other option is to push things in a new unfamiliar direction, which can be initially off-putting but which has a lot more staying power if it’s done well.
It's the sort of statement that can get tomatoes thrown at you, but a pretty good example in my eyes is the difference between the Star Wars films "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi". The Force Awakens plays within the boundaries of existing expectations, and in doing so creates a very fun and well executed film that's a blast to watch. But then you have the Last Jedi, which does new things and challenges your expectations, creating whole new things for your imagination.
 
"Village of the Angels" is interesting, in that it tries to have its cake and eat it to. It’s an episode built up out of familiar elements, and allowing them to play out, but then butting in with brand new things that crack the shell of your expectations. But it’s also not a standalone story, and so it’s difficult to judge some of its elements till we see how they play out in the next two episodes (if they do at all).
 
The Weeping Angels are one of the most iconic and beloved monsters in Doctor Who, despite only appearing as the main antagonists in a handful of episodes, and this story very quickly gets us up to speed on all their elements: time-shifting, moving when unobserved, the image of an angel becomes an angel, a person becoming an angel and having sand in their eyes. At first, it seems like its just going through the motions, until after setting those elements up, it plays with them. And those parts? Well…
 
Where this episode really shines, is its understanding of what visual elements Doctor Who can actually pull off well--aside from some dodgy CGI at the end, but even that was unique and interesting enough for me to suspend my disbelief even while it resembled a video game cutscene. There are some truly fantastic visuals here that stick in your memory: the Doctor crumpling the drawing of the Angel up, and the angel itself crumbling with it. The Doctor throwing that paper in the fire, and the flaming angel that appeared afterwards. The night/day divided screen of the past and future of the Village. And of course, the final and likely instantly iconic image of the Doctor turning into a Weeping Angel.
There's enough here to keep you coming back just to see the things you remember fondly, and I expect this is going to be a well-regarded episode by the general public for just this reason--its super entertaining. This is one of those episodes where even though I'm going to whine about the issues I have with it in a minute, I'd be lying if I said wasn't a bunch of fun. The things that work about it work well enough that I'm sure lots of folks will have a very good time with it, and I'm very happy for them.
 
But does the episode as a whole work? Well, no. While other episodes have played very carefully with the Covid filming restrictions, this this definitely the episode where the inventive solutions to the problems end up hurting the episode instead of rescuing. Largely, this is due to the vast difference in how the tension is being built up between the two halves of the split main cast. It’s become a signature of this series to split the cast up into two parties so that filming the episodes under covid restrictions would be less ungainly. Only here, one half of the cast is having the tension ratcheted up as they try to fend off Weeping Angels in a spooky house, and the other half of the cast is engaged in a slowly unraveling mystery about a missing child. Both these plots are fine on their own but cutting back and forth between them ends up stopping the buildup of tension in each story to a halt during the switch overs, because they're not having story beats of equivalent tension next to each other. This is a nuts-and-bolts criticism, the sort that most viewers probably just vaguely feel in the back of their head, but it’s there, nonetheless.
 
But the biggest issue with the episode is everything after the reveal of why the Rogue Angel has infested Claire's mind. And... alright, we can't avoid it anymore.
Let's talk about the Division.
 
The Division is of course the secret service style group on Galifrey that erased the Doctor's memories of being a secret chosen one from another Universe and has been a very important part of this whole series. We've slowly been learning about them, and the big reveal this episode is that the Rogue Angel is something of a Space/Time Wikileaks Whistleblower, holding all of the information the Division kept from the Doctor, and it will give that info to the Doctor if she saves it. Of course, the Angel is duplicitous, and turns the Doctor in to save its own skin (stone?). But it’s an odd sort of turn, and it doesn't work the way it did before.
Last week, the Doctor was the focus of the parts of the episode that lead up to the Division plot reveals, and they worked. The episode built up to them, and paid those things off.
But the set up and pay off here is odd, in a lot of ways. Claire is the min focus of the segments with the Doctor, only for us to learn very late in the game that actually the focus is the Doctor in a way that doesn’t tie into anything we learned or followed about the Angels—it’s a follow up from things from previous episodes, and it feels like an emotional leap. Maybe if you marathon Flux later it will all flow together better and this will feel more natural, but week to week it not only feels unearned, but Claire’s plot goes rather unfulfilled as well. Will Claire get her moment next week? We can only hope.

The other weird thing is the plot with the little girl—I was talking to Will Shaw (who writes incredible coverage of this Doctor Who Series you should read) after the episode, and after I mentioned I wondered what the payoff to her story set up would be, did he point out that the payoff was that she was the old lady they met earlier in the episode was actually her. Was it just that I am too jaded to these sorts of twists and figured that out very early on? Or was it just the weird way that the pacing was thrown off by the divided cast segments that meant that it didn’t feel like a climax to a storyline as things didn’t build up to it specifically? I’m not sure, but it didn’t quite fly.
 
But does that matter? Its visually pleasing, the Angels were creepy, the Doctor was funny. Is the script a structural mess? Absolutely. Will anyone care? Probably not. Its an odd case where the episode could be better with stronger emotional payoffs and more impactful scares with just a little tweaking, but there’s enough that works that complaining feels pointless.
 
It could be better, but you had a good time. Whatever sort of bar that is, I’m fine with it.
 
See you next week!

In old television anthology series, there was an understanding that the same cast could come in and play multiple roles throughout the production as need be. You'd tune in one week, and a character actor would be playing the secretary to the mayor, then a few weeks later you'd see her back as the detective's long separated ex-girlfriend. Over time this became less and less common, but you'll still find it in long running dramas like "Midsomer Murders" or "Law and Order", albeit with the roles often spaced out by years instead of weeks.
 
This method was used in its fullest extent in the A&E Nero Wolfe series in 2001, where every episode had the same cast working in the various changing roles, giving the whole production the feel of a local theater company presenting you these stories.
 
While this trope used to be common, it's fallen away till it’s mostly only seen in long running crime dramas, and so here we are in Doctor Who Flux, three episodes into the season, three paragraphs into this essay, and with Chibnall taking this format and using it for one of the most creative and successful episodes of his tenure.
 
"Once, Upon Time," was perhaps vastly oversold before airing as being an experimental revelation for the show. It's not, and really the comparison does the episode no favors in that it obscures the clever way its playing on tropes the viewer is already familiar with. How much you enjoy those tropes is going to factor a lot into the gas milage you'll get with this one.
 
So, ya like procedural cop dramas? A lot has been made of the 13th Doctor's relationship to the police. One of her companions is a police officer, and her expressions of her identity often emphasize elements of justice, and law and order (dun dun, executive producer Dick Wolf). This is brought into its most focal point with the revelation that the Doctor worked for an organization called "The Division", a sort of Timelord Spacecop group that was entangled in a bunch of the past events the Doctor has been uncovering during her adventures.
 
I'm not going to attempt some defense of the "Doctor as a cop" thing, its not a take I like, but its also not one I'm going to pour more ink into tearing into because... well its already been covered, and I'm not passionate enough to dig into that with a greater depth than is already out there. So, for now lets just establish that it's a bad idea and leave it at that. Because like it or not (and well, I'm in the not) its there. Which leads to the question of what exactly Chibnall is trying to do with this?
 
I think that question has come into focus here, as after setting us up with the basic serial structure he used writing Broadchurch with a tangle of plot threads thrown at us to watch untangle and come back together, we now reach something playful with the format. We're given backstory flashbacks for our characters, where different roles are played by our main cast, straight out of Nero Wolfe. Part of this is clearly very clever Covid filming protocols, each actor is clearly on set with as few people as possible, and the group of main cast members who have to be around each other anyway get to work around the awkwardness of shooting whole scenes with just shot-reverse-shots. The result is much better performances from everyone, as they're actually able to go back and forth with their co-stars. But beyond being practical, we're being thrown into familiar genres.
 
Our first strand is Bel, a survivor of the Flux who is living in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that follows it, hiding from monsters like she's in a horror movie. Turns out she's Vinder's partner, which I was surprised by because I thought for sure she was going to be some lesbian representation since we hadn't had anything so far this series, but it is what it is, and the character as envisioned is a strong one.
After that, we get the "one last mission before I can retire" cop drama of the Doctor going on a job for the Division in the past, the domestic drama of Yaz at home with her sister, the political conspiracy of Vinder, and the Romantic Drama of Dan. Azhur Saleem does a great job switching between these and manages to quickly capture the tone and feeling of each strand so they feel unique.
 
Quick aside here: Azhur Saleem is the best director of the 13th Doctor's tenure so far, yes? He has a grasp of visual space and clarity of character that makes the show pop from the script page in a way that seems to have finally come into focus with him. It’s too bad it’s so late in the game, but we finally have a real working vision of how to direct the 13th Doctor's era. I'm looking forward to his other two episodes.
 
Back to the strands--Chibnall's experience with police drama comes into focus here, as the tropes he's playing with quickly establish each segment. But what's notable about these flashbacks is how each is so filled with failure (the exception being Bel's, the only story that's largely "present"). None of these stories are true triumphs: Vinder stands up for what he believes and gets punished for it. The Doctor confronts the bad guys as a spacecop, but only puts off the problem to deal with later. Yaz can't manage to balance her family and work life, and still can't even now with the Doctor despite everything, getting into a spat with her just like with her sister. Dan almost manages to move forward with his love, but he's held back by both his own past and his own circumstances.
 
Everyone here is haunted by their past, and presumably this is why we're seeing the weeping angel's featured so strongly leading up to next week, villains who literally throw their targets into the past. We'll see if that clear thread is picked up next week or not.
 
For now, we have an episode that was the most fun I've had with the show in a long time. I really liked this one, and I'm hopeful that it's a sign of good things to come, especially with the other episodes directed by Mr. Saleem. We'll see.
 
So till then, we'll wait for the angels.

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​Well, that was pretty good.
After the whirlwind of last week which spent most of its runtime setting up the future story threads, we finally get to sit down and actually enjoy one of those stories and... you know, once again, one really gets the sense that this is the form that Chibnall's Dr Who always should have been in. If you don't like Chibnall's quirks, you won't like them here either, but the way it’s all executed simply works better than it has before for the 13th Doctor. I don't even think this is the best episode of Chibnall's Doctor Who, but it is certainly the one that feels the most like it’s something that could be sustained.
My previous favorite episodes very much felt like one offs--you don't do Demons of the Punjab twice, or if you do, the second time isn't going to work as well.
Here, we have a structure that could be repeated across a variety of stories with different elements, and have it work. Again, this is because the structure is playing to Chibnall's strengths. We spent a lot of time doing set up last week, and because of that we can simply spend time with all of the different plot threads and character without needing to reestablish who these characters are, and reducing the guest cast with lines down to a minimum.
Which is also useful, because this is also a very obviously, "Effected by Covid" episode. Not in a bad way, it’s very well structured around that, but you can tell. Previous Chibnall series have reveled in being able to place several characters in frame at once, giving the show a feeling of constant presence, emphasizing connectivity between characters so that shots showing divisiveness strike harder. Here though, shots are much more isolated. Lots of shot / reverse-shot conversations where there isn't a "back of the head" body double for the other party they're talking to, as they're keeping the contact to a minimum. Lines of dialogue from characters feel sometimes like declarations being given to the room, as the actor was clearly alone on set during that shot.
But this isn't a criticism. In fact, I'd say it comes together stronger than the choices made in previous seasons.
 
Chibnall's Doctor Who has always wanted to be a character drama, but without the extended runtime of serialization, has often staggered at the attempt as there were too many characters in each episode trying to do too many things.
But here, our heroes are divided up, and given characters to play against directly. There's an intimacy to it all, a sense that we're really getting to meet these people and peer into their perspectives. Whether by design or luck, it’s a stylistic improvement, and one I hope we'll see continued going forward.
 
But what of the story itself? Well, it’s funny for one thing. John Bishop pulls off some punchlines that I had to pause on going back to them later, but I can't deny they worked. The Sontarans were a wonderful balance of evil and ridiculous and gave the biggest laugh of the night with "And I wanted to ride a horse!". The A and B plots, set in the modern day and in the Crimean War respectively, intertwine concerning a Sontaran invasion of Earth through time. They both shine, and I had a great time with both of them (aside from a thing we'll return to later...).
 
But what of the C plot? What of Yaz? Well... unfortunately Yaz doesn't get a lot to do in this episode. After a refreshing turn last week, this week we find things are once again happening to Yaz, rather than Yaz doing things. She is transported to a place, a flying upside-down pyramid tells her to do something, she follows it, meets Vinder, and then meets the bad guys who turn her into a replacement statue/conduit. It's the weak spot of the episode, mainly redeemed by how much damn fun the actors seem to be having. Swarm, Azure, Vinder, and Yaz all seem to be having a blast on set, and the energy that Swarm and Azure bring to their performances is clearly infectious. But they steal the show from Yaz, who already just had the show stolen by a pyramid, and it would be nice if the following weeks give her an episode focused on her character.
 
So, mostly its a good time. But what about that bit I said I'd come back to?
Well, the ending.
The ending is just the ending of "The Christmas Invasion", an earlier episode of Doctor Who, played out with the same emotional beats. Is it effective? Well, your milage may vary. But it left me pretty cold. I had been on board with the story, even the disappointing C plot, but the payoff felt like a whimper, even though it involved things literally going bang. Oh well.
Even so, I'm hoping the renewed energy and structure continues in the coming weeks. My fingers are crossed.
 
* * *
 
Theme corner!
This episode featured three plots of people turning their enemies’ own possessions against them. Two of the plots have our heroes using Sontaran tech to defeat Sontarans, and the third has Swarm and Azure using the technology of "The Planet Time" for whatever their scheme is and turning two of the heroes literally into objects to use against their enemies.
Mary Seacole and the Doctor being healing figures is of course a contrast to Swarm and Azure placing two people into positions they will be hurt and turning to ash anything they don't like.
And once again, we have a return to Chibnall's body horror, one of the defining tropes of his era in my opinion. Yaz and Vinder becoming statue like conduits for time, covered in writing and markings, is a very nice piece of subtle horror. We'll see how it plays out.
 
And next week should prove... an interesting moment for my opinions on this series, judging by the preview. But more on that then.

​Doctor Who: Flux
Part 1: The Halloween Apocalypse
 
Doctor Who has been going on for so long that seeing it do something it hasn't done before on TV is always a little refreshing. Whether or not it works as intended is almost beside the point: when you're on your 39th series of a TV show (and 13th of its current run) that's had five TV spinoffs and so many spinoffs outside TV it’s not even worth trying to count, something new is always worth a respectful nod.
And Doctor Who Flux is certainly something new for the show.
 
Chris Chibnall is most known for his work on the mystery series "Broadchurch", a sprawling story about a small town that has a heinous crime happen in it. It’s a story told each season week by week, each episode part of a larger whole.
When Chibnall became the showrunner of Doctor Who, I expected the format to be somewhat similar. And at first, it seemed I was right: the ending of the first adventure of the thirteenth Doctor is a cliffhanger right into the start of the second episode. However, that proved to be more the exception than the rule. Most of the 13th Doctor's era ended up being largely episodic, with fewer multi-part stories than any era of the show’s revival (and, with the current Flux story, tying the 9th Doctor's single season's multi-parters).
It seemed a puzzling choice to me, as Chris Chibnall's greatest strengths as a writer were interconnectivity. His ability to juggle a group of characters who are each going about their own lives until events start forcing convergences between them. In Broadchurch, it was the murder of a child. Here, it’s the murder of the universe.
There's a strange inevitability to this, a sense that this is what we should have been doing the whole time. It’s what Chibnall coming to Doctor Who feels like if you step back from it and just imagine it as a concept, to be a little insufferable, it’s the Plato's Cave of Chibnall Who. But well, we're finally here. All that waiting, and we're finally at that point.
So, what's it like?
Well, in short, its sort of like Broadchurch Season 2.
That is, it its own story but one that is connected inexorably from the stories before it. As well as one where the opening episode spends a lot of time establishing things, we're going to see later with the expectation that we'll stick around to see the payoff. The story establishes its ties to the past fast and furiously--though to be fair it establishes everything fast and furiously. Vin Diesel is nodding his approval somewhere.
The Doctor is dealing with the Flux, a force that is unraveling the very fabric of the universe. She's also dealing with Sontarans invading Earth (though she doesn't know that yet), Weeping Angels (though she also doesn't know that yet), some guys in 1820's Liverpool having an issue (again, unaware), a fleet of doggos trying to kidnap humanity, and a pair of evil crystal-faced siblings who want to do bad things. And maybe something else I'm missing.
The main point is that we're dealing with a lot of plot threads, which are being laid out to us in an unraveled state so that we can watch them entwine, in the opposite manner of the universe unraveling. Presumably, this entwining will go along with fixing the universe itself. We'll see.
As such, it’s difficult to describe the Halloween Apocalypse, as its very much an introduction to what is going to follow. This is just a prediction, but while we may see bits from each of the storylines in each episode going onwards, it seems likely that we're going to have a structure of each episode dealing with one of the big plotlines we've established, with the Flux itself and perhaps the crystal siblings being running threads through all of them.
 
Really, the episode is more focused on establishing its characters than giving this episode a focused plot, and considering the introductory nature of things, that's probably for the best. Surprisingly, a big highlight is the newcomer Dan, played with instant likability by John Bishop. Did I think I was going to like Dan going in? No. Did Mr. Bishop manage to sell me on the character very quickly? Yes.
This goes into what has been one of the strongest points of Chibnall's era of Doctor Who: the casting. Bishop pulls off some lines that in other hands would be frankly pretty awkward, giving them a playfulness and sincerity that makes his scenes a delight to watch. When he finally gets to interact with Yaz, played by Mandip Gill, the way he doesn't absorb the energy in the room, but instead builds on it helps the scene shine, and you can see why they wanted to bring him into the cast's dynamic.
Watching Jodie Whittaker and Gill go at it is good, and frankly pretty refreshing, at the episode's start. It’s the dynamic I was hoping to see, and the dynamic is fun. I was disappointed when I heard we weren't going to have the adventures of just the pair of them, but Dan doesn't derail the pair, because Bishop understands something that in hindsight makes some of the earlier episodes a little unbalanced in dynamics: he doesn't need to have the spotlight all the time, and the show around him is better if he doesn't try to focus it in on him with every line. So, Dan is our fresh face, asking questions for the audience, being surprised at things, while Yaz gets to be the old hand who has seen it all. Its good stuff and makes me look forward to their future adventures together.
 
But again, there's a strange sense of "Ah, this is he dynamic we wanted from the get-go, isn't it?" I liked all of the fam in the previous Whittaker seasons, but four main cast members was just too much for the episodic format to handle. Here, it all clicks together nicely. It’s the right balance, and I like it.
 
I have a feeling that this episode will work better when you can binge straight into the second, on its own its a madcap rush of ideas that doesn't give you the satisfying tie up you want, because that's not what it’s doing or meant to do. We'll have to be back next week to see how that plays out.
 
* * *
 
All those words, and we haven't actually answered the question: What is Flux about?
Well, if I had to guess, it’s a story about things being taken and separated from things that matter to them. Throughout the episode, we start with the Doctor and yaz locked up on an alien world separated from the TARDIS, we see Dan kidnapped by space dogs, Dan's girlfriend and the mysterious Claire are both time-zapped by Weeping Angels to the past, we have one Crystal Alien named Swarm locked up by the Division (of Timeless Children Fame) and escaping, disintegrating his captors into crystal dust, before rescuing his sister who has been apparently captured and forced to live a life thinking she was a different person working for the Division. We also meet Vinder, who is separated from basically everything, locked away in a space station observing nothing, and a pair of guys in the 1800's who...
...who...
...Look I don't know why they're there yet and they don't tie into my thesis as far as I know, so maybe I'm full of it, maybe they're an outlier and should not have been counted.
But most of the plotlines are filled with things being taken from people, and those people wanting them back.
The biggest one of these things is of course that the Doctor wants to know the truth of the Division and the Timeless Children. A child stolen from their parents, raised by another culture, and their biology and memories stolen from them for the good of others.
 
The Flux is wiping everything away, just as the Doctor struggles to learn what was taken from her.
 
Now the question is, how will these strands form knots?

​Graelyn hung the string of lights up and stood back to admire her handiwork.
"Wow," Graelyn said, "it looks like shit."
Arch sighed, "It's not too bad, it's certainly the best possible look under the circumstances."
He was right, not that she wanted to admit it right now, as she avoided scratching her face. This was the worst place she could have gotten dropped on a mission, only to get involved in a wild chase that resulted in her satchel of the crystal dust that allowed her to travel between alternate realities dropping into a precipice. And then, of course, it had turned out there was a plague here, and even after they got in touch with Spiral, they had to quarantine themselves.
"You know, I'd had bigger plans for my birthday this year," Graelyn said.
"You don't even know how old you are, I mean, didn't you get turned into a baby that one time and have to redo your entire--"
"Hush. I'm serious."
She flopped down on the couch in the house they'd rented, and groaned. "Look, I've never had a good birthday. Something bad always happens, so this year I decided I was going to make it a good birthday no matter what. No unexpected breakups, or familial abuse, or gaslighting or--"
"--I feel like this is a very low bar--"
"And...just spend it with all the friends I've made."
Arch nodded, he could get that, as much as he really could. Neither of them had particularly minded being quarantined, they had both spent a long time alone in their lives. But looking at Graelyn staring up at the ceiling, he began to realize exactly how not-alone they'd both become.
It hadn't been so long ago that Archimedes was alone on Ahnerabe Station, thinking he'd spend the rest of his life alone and adrift. It wasn't so long ago for her that Graelyn had pushed the whole world away because of her hellish upbringing, and had given certainty to a life of solitude.
Even being quarantined together with his friend was twice as much human contact per day than he'd expected out of his life.
So Arch put his processors and brain cells to work, and began to formulate a plan.

* * *

Let's look outside the building, shall we? Whole world, big plague, you know the deal. The streets are empty, aside from one figure hiding behind a tree. They peer at the rented house, and begin to sneak towards it. Over their shoulder is a bag: Graelyn's bag.

* * *

Arch of course, heard the door unlock. He had exceptional hearing, being that it was literally just high end microphones and vibration sensors. So when the person tried to sneak in, the attempt was thwarted fairly quickly, as they got halfway into the kitchen to find Arch sliding in behind them to block their exit, and Graelyn, with Face-mask, standing in front of them with her hands on her hips.
"Did you really think you were breaking into my house? On my birthday?"
"It's not actually our house, it is a rental," Arch said.
"Not the most important detail I think. Now who are you?"
The man reached for his own face-mask, and Graelyn and Arch both threw up their hands, "No no no!"
"You can keep that on, we don't need to see your face."
The man still pulled his mask down, and Graelyn and Arch threw their hands up in disgust, "Really?" Graelyn said, "What was the point of that, I can hear you just fine through the mask."
The man's face went red, "Don't you know who I am?"
Graelyn shook her head.
"I'm the one who should have had your adventures! You thieving girl."
"...What?" Graelyn said, blankly.
"I'm Elliott Jo Jordan. I was the top candidate for Project Atlantis' intern position, but you somehow got it instead! I should have been the one travelling between alternate realities--"
"Uh, hate to bring this up but to be here you had to have literally travelled between alternate realities..." Arch noted.
He spun around to point a finger at Arch. "I'm not finished! I had to make a deal with that group Dusk in order to find you, and destroy you for what you did."
"I thought we defeated Dusk?" Arch said.
"They are Time Travelers. That does make it messy."
"But I thought we prevented them from ever existing?"
"But if you time traveled before you never existed you still exist."
"Ah, right. Forgot."
"You have a hard drive in your brain, how do you forg--"
"STOP TALKING LIKE I'M NOT HERE!" he yelled, "I DEMAND TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!"
Graelyn laughed, "No thank you. Anyway, let me have my bag back."
He grinned, "Never. I finally have the upper hand on you, Graelyn Scythes. I have the power here, the leverage. The only way off this rock. Now you're going to--hey!"
While he was yammering, Arch hand simply pulled the bag out of his hand. He proceeded to block the thief by placing his hand on the top of his head as he flailed and tried to move forward.
"Right, let's get back to my birthday then, finish this up?"
Arch nodded, "Yeah, honestly I was expecting more of a threat today, I don't know why."
She shrugged, "I won't complain."
The theif promptly found himself out the door, which was slammed and locked behind him, and a chair put under the doorknob on the other side. Grumpily, he wandered off into the night.
"They'll take me seriously..." he muttered as she stepped into a puddle, and sighed.

* * *

"Well now that that's done," Arch said, holding up a tablet in front of Graelyn who was sipping a glass of milk on the couch, "I have a special present for you!" While the lag is too bad for video calls here, I asked some of our friends to send you messages!"
Graelyn tilted her head, "Really? Why?"
"...Because it's your birthday and we care about you."
She looked down at her hands, "I guess that makes sense. I don't expect you got many."
He shook his head, "I got...a lot. So why don't we start." He flopped down next to her on the couch, and each of them holding a side of the tablet, hit play.

Loading.

Loading.

Video Message 1

"Hey Graelyn! This is Lady Aesculapius!" Lady Aesculapius says, wearing a T-Shirt that said, "I'm Lady Aesculapius" on it. "I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and I promise my friend Virginia Stens-6 will make you cupcakes when you get out of there--oh Blanche, Jason can you say hi."
A young woman who looked just like Graelyn, only with white hair, came into frame, "Hi. Sorry again about trying to murder you a few times."
A man wearing a t-shirt that said "I'm the ACE up your sleeve!" popped in from the other side of the frame, "Hey Graelyn! You might not remember me much, but happy birthday nonetheless!"
"Alright, that's all from us, your most successful spin off! Now go have fun!"

"Hey Graelyn, President Zhang Han here, wishing you a happy birthday from the presidency of Mars. My wife isn't here right now but my daughter Odyssia is. Odyssia look at the camera. Look!" she pointed at the Camera, and Odyssia barely glanced at it from her perch on her mother's lap and then returned to staring at something out of frame. "Oh well. Anyway, I've arranged for a special gift for you to be placed at the following coordinates-" a series of numbers flashed up on screen. "Many happy returns."

Graelyn didn't learn this till later, but the gift was of course a basket of popular exports and products from the planet Mars, including four different varieties of olives.

"Happy birthday from Fleet Admiral Cornelia Carthage," the admiral said, sitting rigidly at her desk. A voice off camera asked: "...is that it?"
"Yes."

"Graelyn! Do you remember me? It's Alice MacLeod. Oh, wait sorry you've probably met dozens of me now. Specifically the first one, you know Songbird? I really hope you have a lovely birthday, and everyone else does too. Jack, Treyvon, Yi, Chantelle, and Shona. Though Shona went on a trip, I'm a little worried about her...regardless, even though we've been apart you're still one of my closest and dearest friends. I hope you visit soon. All the love from the World Revolutionary Council."

"Is this on?" Shona asked.
"It's on," The Tourist replied.
"Great! Hey Grae, it's me, Shona! Also your ex-girlfriend Ashlyn is here--"
"I TOLD YOU TO NOT MENTION THAT!" Ashlyn yelled.
"I thought you said you're  on good terms?"
"That doesn't mean...oh whatever," Ashlyn popped into frame next to Shona, "Hi, Happy Birthday Graelyn. I hope you and that Archimedes fellow I've heard about are having a good time. Are you two together now?"
"ASHLYN!" Shona shoved her out of frame. "So yeah, me, the Tourist, Ashlyn, Pathway, and Miranda--not your Miranda a prototype one--all wish you the happiest day! Eat cake!"

Graelyn and Arch awkwardly didn't look at each other for 87 seconds, and then Graelyn played the next video.

A Graelyn appears, not our Graelyn, but well, it's a Graelyn, "Hey me! So, things have been really great with this version of our family here...I actually just became president of the physics club. Can you believe that? I've made a lot of friends here...and well...happy birthday. You deserve it. Cheers!"

A really gross man appears. This is more of an objective description than you'd think, because his skin has been ripped off his face. Auteur grins up at the camera, "Bonjour, my daughter. Are you well? Are you eating? Have you been eaten? I'm sorry I couldn't make whatever you invited me to which was," he looks down at a paper, "this video message. But I will be sure that I make you a video message next time to make up for it."
He stops to take a sip from a glass of something that it's hard to tell is blood or wine. Trick question-it's 50/50.
"Ah yes, the formalities: Happy Birthday my dear child. I tried making you a birthday present, by asking Dracula if he would meet you, but I was informed by Father and Mother that I was simply talking in my sleep. The nerve! The audacity! I'll make it happen though, I'll write you a tale that you'll never forget my child, you'll struggle and bleed and--"
The video kindly cuts out.

"Hey Grae, it's your former lawyer Jame Morrel. I hope you have a great one. And if you need more legal services just contact me at--"
Graelyn skipped ahead to the next one.

A woman appears, holding a mimosa. She is sitting on a golden throne, waited on by a man and woman in stereotypical butler and maid outfits. The throned woman is wearing an elegant black dress, and sunglasses. Indoors.
"Hello dear, this is Ariadne Moore, or as you're more familiar with me, Chess Mistress Hex--what no I'm tired of the caviar, get me something else--regardless I hear it's your birthday." There is a long pause. "So I hope that goes well for you or whatever."
"Wow," Arch said as the video ended.
"She really does care," Graelyn said.


There is a huge group-shot--we see tons of familiar faces: it's all of Dawn, standing under the swirling clouds of Spiral. A T-Rex dozes peacefully in the background. In the front is Kinan Jans, dressed as Sesshomaru from Inu Yasha.
"Hello Graelyn," Kinan Jans says in her monotone with a wave, "I hope you know how much you have meant to all of us her, and to me in particular. I know this is a message from your workplace so I'll try not to get too smarmy or whatever. But I wanted to dress up as my favorite memory together, when we went trick-or-treating in Nightmoore. Anyway, from all of us here at Dawn..."
The group shouts at the camera, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" which wakes the T-Rex up, and it roars, startling everyone as the camera cuts off.

Graelyn looked over at Arch, "Thank you. You didn't have to do that."
He shrugged, "I kinda did. You're my best friend."
"Right back atcha--wait whats that?"
Arch looked at the tablet, "Ah, we're getting a new file. Looks like a late entry?" He pressed play.

Kinan Jans and Backgammon Jenny appear. Jenny is popping gum, and sitting on the edge of Kinan's desk. Kinan is back to her usual outfit, fingers steepled.
"Arch informed us that you caught the culprit behind your stranding. It's good to know you'll be able to head back on your own power upon the completion of your quarantine. However..."
Jenny laughed, "They're going to hate this."

"Well as I said, I'm glad you caught the culprit," Kinan droned, "but you do know that now that you had contact with someone there we have to start your quarantine clock over."
Graelyn stared unblinking, "Cool," she said, "super cool. I figured my Birthday was going too well."
Arch put a hand on her shoulder, it was very big compared to her shoulder. "I'll make you something. Your birthday, whatever you like. I've been getting pretty decent at cooking despite, you know, eating mush."
Graelyn smiled, "Let's do it together. It may not be what we expected, but we'll make the best of it. Happy birthday to me."

Thank you for five years of adventure. We hope to bring you many more. From all of us here at Arcbeatle Press and 10,000 Dawns, happy 5th anniversary to 10kd!

​
Copyright 2020, Arcbeatle Press and James Wylder, all rights reserved. Auteur is the property of Jacob Black, used with permission. Chess Mistress Hex is the property of Taylor Elliott, used with permission. Alice MacLeod is the property of Jo Smiley, used with permission. 10,000 Dawns and it’s characters are the property of James Wylder and Arcbeatle Press. This story is a work of fiction, any resemblance to persons living or dead, or events past or present is purely co-incidental. Any resemblance to characters not owned or licensed is done firmly within the grounds of parody or satire. Arcbeatle Press is located in Elkhart, IN. arcbeatlepress.com

​The Tourist pulled the chart down, and pointed at it with a rather excessively long pointing stick. Pathway sat with an ice pack on her head, Ashlyn was reading a book called, "The Untold Adventures", ("Well I didn't do that...oh no wait that did happen." she said at least three times.), Miranda was on the floor playing with spray-paint, and making the whole floor into a mural. Shona, well, Shona was just lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling throwing a ball up and down.
"Hello? Are you even listening? I have another plan to get us noticed!"
"What are you going to do?" Pathway said flatly, "Blow up a universe? Run off with Ashlyn for a long time, and then neither of you tell us what happened for literally days while the two of you avoid each other in comically romantic mishaps around the Pyramid?"
The Tourist pointed at pathway, but no words came, and she lowered her finger, and shrugged. "Okay, so maybe my plans haven't gone according to plan."
"That sounds like a pretty big problem for plans, "Pathway replied.
"Can you just get...all the way off my back about this?"
"I'm not on your back, I'm in a chair."
"This is why you weren't in the novel, bejeebus." The Tourist rubbed her forehead, and Miranda coughed. All eyes turned to her.
"Hi, yes, Miranda here. CNN. So, Miss Tourist, why are we still...doing this?"
"What's with the CNN gag?"
"I thought it was fun."
Shrug, "You know, I take that back, continue."
"Thanks, look, we've already done a lot of stuff. We ended the world!"
"That got undone pretty quick," Ashlyn muttered.
"...and formed a rock band."
"Okay, that part was actually fun," Pathway noted.
"But my main point here is...I think we had a good run at this? People paid some attention to us. We had a good time."
The Tourist frowned, and lowered her pointy stick. "We can't just, end things now, there's still so much to do!"
"Like?"
She fumbled through her trenchcoat pockets, but came up with nothing, "Uh...well..." She threw the pointer, and adjusted her sunglasses, "there is a mysterious final task I had for us...one big plan to change everything for us."
"No there isn't," Ashlyn said,
The Tourist frowned, "Well don't tell them that!"
Ashlyn sighed, "Admit it, just admit why you're really doing this, Tourist!"
She threw her hands up, "I already told you! Attention! I could not have been more clear this was all just a selfish ploy for attention!"
Ashlyn crossed her arms, "Is it."
"YES?"
"Whose attention?"
The Tourist froze solid, and glanced at the rest of the room, "Uhhh."
"Hmn?" Miranda asked.
"Yes, go on," Pathway prodded.
"I missed most of that but please say the interesting thing," Shona said.
The Tourist turned around, this was not going her way. She was supposed to keep this going for some time, not end it all with, ugh, being *honest*. It was grotesque. No, no she had a better plan...she started the laughter slow and soft, and increased it in intensity, throwing a hand in the air, fingers splayed in a claw. "So then, you finally figured it out."
"Yeah," Miranda said, "we literally all knew you weren't going to be honest, again, and just do something weird like that. We all know why you're doing this, just say it."
Shona raised a hand, "Actually uh, Tourist, let me point a thing out? You do realize that none of us would be here still if we didn't like hanging out with you, do you?"
The Tourist's jaw went a little slack, "Uh, no?"
Pathway raised an eyebrow, "Do you really think any of us care about recognition the way you do."
"Oh I absolutely do," Ashlyn said.
"Sorry, do you really think any of you but you and Ashlyn were in this for selfish reasons?"
"Hey!" Ashlyn and the Tourist yelled back.
Pathway stood up, "We're still here because this is fun. It's fun to spend time with friends, so run around, to be somewhere. If you spend enough time alone, those things become precious. And you may be an emotionally insecure jerk, but in the end you do the right thing, even if, you know, you have to posture about not doing the right thing for ten minutes."
The Tourist looked at her feet.
"We're here because we like you, stupid. So throw out your plan. Let's find a path somewhere else. We'll go with you, right?"
Miranda nodded, "It's been fun, and if we're lucky we can find another roller derby."
"I've been bored ever since we finished mopping up the Centro resistance, so this has been pretty great, plus there are a lot of great food trucks when you have a time machine," Shona said.
"It's not a time machine it travels along narrative--nevermind," The Tourist tried not to smile. She failed, so she spun around again to face the controls to the pyramid. "Right, well, if there's no plan, then let's go somewhere exciting."
Ashlyn perked up, "Somewhere wild?"
"You could say that. One of my favorite places. Where beasts come from all over to compete for who is the supreme beast." She grinned, "If you're all still up for the ride?"
The cheers told her they were, and as the Pyramid zipped off, The Tourist felt her face flush.
The right kind of attention, after all.

* * *

Ashlyn sat there, completely unimpressed.
"You said beasts. You said it was wild."
The tourist pointed out, "It's exactly that! No lies!"
"Personally, I am having a wonderful time," Shona said, holding the bag out to the couple, "popcorn?"
"Yes," Ashlyn grumbled, and took some, chewing angrily.
"I hate you," she mumbled to the Tourist.
"Love you too."
Ashlyn stopped and stared, "Sorry what was that?"
"Oh uh, I mean, I despise you, you...filthy...human...with all that finely done hair and...attractive bisexual aesthetic."
"I don't entirely know what that means, but please continue while I eat Shona's popcorn."
Pathway and Miranda slipped back in, carrying their commemorative stuffed toys.
"You really like that stuff?" the Tourist said dryly.
"It's so cute!" Miranda said, waggling the stuffed animal in front of her by awkwardly leaning over all the other seats.
"Yes, they are soft," Pathway replied.
"Well this whole thing is still stupid," Ashlyn muttered, as the announcer came back on to announce that the next round of the puppy bowl was starting.
"Shh! Miranda said, "Look the little golden retriever fell asleep!"
"So did Shona," Pathway noted.
The Tourist smiled, honestly. She'd never forget this.

​REMEMBRANCE of the JUDICATOR “So on the bright side,” began Ashlyn Oswin, straining against her bonds, “we're not back with the talking cats.” 
“Everybody wants to be a c...” Miranda began to hum sarcastically. 
“Hush, you can't sing that here,” barked a guard. “No copyrighted music, are we clear?” 
“If you think I give a damn about that sort of thing, you have another thing coming,” the mysterious traveller in all of narrative space only known as the Tourist retorted, trying to take a daring stance. 
Unfortunately, she had yet to get used to being chained at the ankles, and so ended up tripping and falling headfirst into the murky, greenish, knee-high waters of the Time Sewers. 
“I could go for some singing cats right now,” Shona commented with surprising calm while the Tourist flapped around in the water, clumsily trying to get back on her feet. 
She really didn't appear to be succeeding — she'd probably got her wrists tangled up in the chains while trying to disentangle them from around her feet, Shona and Ashlyn reckoned. She struggled some more. 
In fact, the Tourist was making an awful lot of bubbles. 
Could... specimens of... of whatever species she was... drown like regular people? Clearly they could trip like anyone else. Or get chained up by sentient crocodiles like anyone else. The real question was, could you drown in a Time Sewer? As soon as they'd arrived here, the greenish water had clogged up the plumbing of the Tourist's Pyramid, and indeed put it temporarily (and temporally) out of commission. The Tourist and her merry crew had stepped out in search of the fluid leak that was so rudely interrupting their lackadaisical rampage through the slice of omniversal reality known as the 10000 Dawns, and been immediately set upon by— 
—well, there was no non-silly way to put this, and anyway, looking at the Tourist and Miranda, Shona and Ashlyn were of a common accord that trying to hold back on the silliness now would have served little purpose. 
If Pathway had been here, there might have been some hope. Things seemed to get suddenly more serious when Pathway was around. Possibly because of the katana. But, alack, Pathway was not here, being busy following a probable wild-goose-chase for a Numbered connection in Dawn 789. 
So it was by its name that Ashlyn eventually resolved to call out to the taciturn guard. 
“Hey! You! Crocodile-guy!” 
“What is it?” the upright, sentient crocodile hissed in response, reflexively pointing its golden spear in their direction. 
“Not to be overly dramatic, but, uh, we think our fellow prisoner there is, er, drowning? Could you maybe... make sure that that... doesn't... happen?” 
“It's in your own interest,” Shona added on a bout of inspiration. “Presumably. You've kept us alive, so clearly we're valuable to you.” 
“You're not talking to a Centro stooge, you know,” Ashlyn muttered with a glare in Shona's direction, which was rather impressive as they were tied back-to-back. “Maybe these guys aren't even capitalists.” 
“I should say not!” grunted the Crocodile, waving its spear closer to them. “We are in fact a Collective! The Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles!” 
The Tourist continued to flail and bubble. 
“Isn't that nice,” Ashlyn said urgently. “Can we maybe swap cards after you save our friend—” 
“—well, more of an acquaintance really—” Miranda quipped. 
“—from drowning to death?” 
The Crocodile's unnervingly toothy maw curved into a smug grin, in a way that gave off an impression that the Crocodiles did this quite a lot. 
“Oh, that won't happen here, not in these waters,” it (he? they?) explained. “The Time Sewers aren't exactly a physical location.” 
“Oh? Isn't this part of the 10,000 Dawns?” Miranda asked with a disappointed pout. “We were rather heading for the 10,000 Dawns here.” 
“Yeah, we had a whole thing going,” Ashlyn concurred. 
“I'm only a humble guard,” the Retconning Crocodile answered, “I'm sure I wouldn't know.” 
“I thought you said you were a Collective, and yet you have an undereducated... working class? Soldier caste?” Shona asked dubiously. 
“...Good point,” said the Crocodile, and then it pulled a remote control from one of the pockets of its regal silk robes. 
Wait, since when had it been wearing a silk robe? 
...All of them? 
Wait, "them"? 
Ashlyn, Shona and Miranda looked around in bafflement. There was now an entire crowd of Crocodiles in fine silk robes watching them; the low ceiling was now high and arched, like a cathedral's. The Tourist was still flopping around in the water, though. 
At long last, one of the Crocodiles — there was no way to tell if it was the original one — stepped forward and pulled the unearthly woman out of the water. She was drenched and gasping for breath, but inexplicably, not only had her never-ending cigarette not left her lips, but its tip was still smoldering. 
“You! You!” she panted and raged at the watching reptiles. “If you do that again I will destroy you! I will annihilate you!” 
“Bigger fish have tried, little OC,” said another one of the Crocodiles. 
“Fish, drowning, hahah, very funny,” the Tourist said, rolling her eyes. “And don't call me an OC.” 
“Why? It's what you are, you know, little traveller,” said yet another Crocodile with a patronizing grin. “A first draft. An echo of the future, half-formed, bereft of a story to your name or—” 
“Ugh! I know!” she cut it off moodily. “But don't say it in front of them!” She gestured at Shona and Ashlyn. “Miranda's like me, but they — they don't understand metafiction the way I do.” 
“Tough,” snapped a Crocodile who wore a bigger and more ornate miter than the other, and was thus presumably in charge. “We are the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles. Metafiction is our thing.” 
“Metafictional parasitism, more like,” the Tourist retorted. “This sludge you call a timeline — you seep in through the cracks when something disturbs the balance of realities, is that it? And you try for... what, global multiversal takeover?” 
“What? But... GMT's not possible,” Miranda observed, sounding as if she'd read that somewhere. “It's logically impossible. You can't linearly conquer an infinity of worlds.” 
“Oh, my dear,” said the head gator, “please do tell us what about us made you assume we were linear, so we can change it immediately. But that's besides the point. You're one to talk, little draft! Behind those shades and that too-cool-for-school attitudes, you're just another intruder.” 
“I am far more than just another intruder,” answered the woman with the pyramid. “I'm the Tourist.” 
“Those are the same thing,” scoffed the crocodile, “always have been. A tourist is an intruder in denial. At least we're honest about what we do. Retconning. It's in the name.” 
With a flourish, the Crocodile took out the remote control again and pressed another button. The chamber around them rippled and the next second, they were seated on a bench in some sort of courtroom — and they always had been. 
“So were going to do what every tourist-trap in the omniverse has wished to do from the very beginning,” the Crocodile continued. “We're going to hold a tourist accountable. We're going to put the Tourist on trial.” 
“What about us?” asked Shona, who had made the unpleasant discovery that all four women's ankles were still chained, now to the foot of the accused's bench. 
“Shona, that's the wrong question,” said the Tourist. 
“Hey! Speak for yourself!” Miranda interrupted. “I mean, I like you, but I do want out of this!” said Miranda. “If they have an issue with you for some reason—well look, we're not tourists, there's no reason they should imprison us—or kill us—or whatever it is they're going to do to—” 
“I'll thank the prisoners to please stop bickering, before we retcon them to have been mute from birth,” said the Head Crocodile, holding up its remote menacingly. “Alright?” 
All four gave silent nods. 
“And for the record, we have you three humans down as accomplices.” 
“A-ha! So you're not human!” Miranda whispered excitedly to the Tourist, who gave her a glare. 
“Even I had ever been human,” the Tourist answered through clenched teeth, “which by the way isn't admission one way or another—my method of travel would have turned me into something... more than human, one way or another, by now. Also, shut up, didn't you hear the reptiles?” 
But then she turned back to the Crocodiles with an accusing look, which, as she was the accused, surely went against all kinds of courtroom protocols. 
“That being said,” she almost shouted, “please explain to me why, and on what kind of authority, you arrest me for some innocent April's Fools Day fun, while you are planning the same thing, if not worse!” 
“The 'why' is very simple,” one of the Crocodiles answered. “Your brute-force meddling with the 10,000 Dawns' narrative is throwing a spanner into our carefully-laid plans.” 
“A little chaos between friends is a wonderful thing,” the Tourist boasted. 
“Not in the eyes of the Firmament it isn't,” the Head Crocodile boomed, thumping his staff against the marble floor for emphasis, and the four realized that it had retconned itself into having held a staff all along, just so it could do that. “Don't you see? They'll never allow your wanton interference to stand. Before day's end, I expect they'll press a massive Reset Button on the entire thing. The entire thing.” 
“Which means,” the other Crocodile elaborated, “now that you've dragged us into this mess, that our plan will be retconned out of History, too!” 
“As for the 'how',” said the Head Crocodile, “true, we have no authority to judge you for intruding upon the 10,000 Dawns, but you know what does? A resident of the 10,000 Dawns.” 
The Head Crocodile resolutely pressed the central button of his Retconning Remote, and suddenly, a Judge had been sitting on a throne all along. It was a robot of some kind — an android of minimalist design, wearing a robe dark as night, with two glowing blue rectangles for eyes and a slightly unnerving way to stare at you with them. 
“May we present the Judicator,” said the Head Crocodile, with a graceful bow for the metal judge, “of Dawn 3. The most perfect legal engine ever devised within the 10,000 Dawns, and widely recognized to have full authority within them. You might have judges who had read the law of your country, but the Judicator had read the law of every country in history. You might have judges who form a decision based on weeks of testimony and careful work through of the information through their synapses, but the Judicator...” 
“Hold on, you're just quoting the Judicator's introduction paragraph in the original 10,000 Dawns webnovel, aren't you?” the Tourist interrupted, unimpressed. 
“We already told you, we're metafictionally-interdimensional mischief-makers. This is what we do.” 
“I'm sorry,” the Judicator blinked, “did I just hear a full confession to crimes against the fabric of reality? That's... unusual.” 
“Ah, no, your honor,” the Head Crocodile said, ambling closer to the robot, “we're the accusers, not the accused. The accused are sitting on that bench over there.“ 
The Judicator's eyes flickered briefly. “Oh yes. Now let me see, son. Ah...” 
The Tourist narrowed her eyes challengingly as the Judicator peered closer at her. 
“Your honor,” said the Head Crocodile, “are you ready to pass judgement on this inveterate meddler for her crimes against the 10,000 Dawns?” 
The Judicator hummed slightly, and stepped back, and sat down in his throne again. 
“Hold on, that's not normal,” said Shona. “The Judicator isn't supposed to need time to think. That's the point of a robot judge. Well, one of them. It deliberates within microseconds. It's not—” 
“Oh, I am ready,” said the Judicator, eying the Tourist curiously. “The young lady's quite right. I am quite ready to pass judgement, if that would be proper. But you're not going to like it. I'm warning you. You're not going to like it.” 
“What?” the Crocodile shook its head. “But you're completely fair! You know every legal system there ever was! If you're not satisfied with your verdict— what?!” 
“Oh, I'm completely satisfied,” said the Judicator. “My programming is completely satisfied. I'm just saying that you're not going to like it, son. That's just how it is.” 
“Stop teasing us and give your verdict, damn you!” the Head Crocodile roared, waving its tail around in a half-circle. 
“I could hold you in contempt of court for that, son,” the Judicator, “but considering the rough time I'm about to give you that wouldn't be fair to you. So I'll refrain. ...But I could. Well, here's the dirty truth. Mysterious traveller in all of narrative space known as the Tourist, Miranda of unclear last name, Shona Davis, Ashlyn Oswin, I find you wholly innocent of any crime against the 10,000 Dawns by the standards of the vast majority of legal systems in my databanks. In fact, the vast majority of legal systems from the 10,000 Dawns' history present in my databanks concur that you five, specifically, by name, are especially, specifically and completely innocent, and that no further ruling may amend this verdict, and that you should be let go at once.” 
The accused's bench and the chains at the four world-travellers' ankles began to vanish. 
“No!” cried the Head Crocodile as all the other members of the Collective collapsed back into him. “You can't! You can't do this! I won't let you!” 
But that's not how the story went. And in the Time Sewers, once someone had set a course for the story, there was nothing more to be said. The Crocodiles had put their all in the Judicator, and the Judicator had said that the prisoners should be let go. And so—they were. 
“Come on, gang,” said the Tourist once they were all safely out of the Time Sewers and in the 10,000 Dawns proper. “We've got a lot of time-travel to do.” 
“What?” 
“Oh, haven't you lot figure it out?” the Tourist said, adjusting her tie. “Well, I don't like to brag, but I am incredibly clever. And I always will be. Which is rather the point.” 
Ashlyn's eyes widened. “Oooh.” 
“Oh! Oh! I'm getting it too!” Miranda said excitedly, bouncing on her rollerblades, which was really rather impressive. 
“Please explain,” Shona put her foot down. 
“To come to its conclusions,” the Tourist explained, talking down to Shona slightly (to her displeasure), “the Judicator draws from a sense of morality and from every record it can find of every law ever passed in history. So, if someone were to, say, go back in time and spam all legal records with an overwhelming number of new laws, stating that we specifically have to be let go under all circumstances — well — its hands would be tied, wouldn't it?” 
“But... wait, you're not really a time-traveller, are you?” Miranda noted. “You and I, we travel sideways in spacetime, not backwards and forwards.” 
“Usually, yes,” said the Tourist. “So it's a lucky thing that I've become an increasingly metafictional individual since I escaped the Drafts, hm?” 
“And an even luckier one,” Ashlyn added with a playful grin, “that you swallowed a bunch of metafictional... time-juice... from the Crocodiles' Time Sewers! Right?” 
“Right-o.” 
“And what about the 'morality' element? The Judicator isn't supposed to go in for loopholes. It's supposed to recognize cheating.” 
“Cheating? Where?” the Tourist shrugged. “We, the heroes, did what we had to do to defeat the bad guys trying to take over the world. Pretty moral if you ask me.” 
“What the Head Honcho, or whatever, said, though,” Ashlyn insisted with a front. “About the Firmament and a... reset. Is it true? Will someone step in and stop us from travelling any further?” 
“...Do I have to answer that?” 
“Ugh, enough soul-searching!” Miranda suddenly declared, and sprayed a portal onto the nearest wall. “I don't know how long it is before day's done. But in the meantime, let's have some adventures.”

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

The enemy ship was large, monolithic, and boasted no interesting features to speak of, which struck the Tourist as an equally unremarkable opening she would be sure to change when she came to retell this story.

Crewed by a menace that brought dread wherever they went, they’d plunged through dimension barriers and shattered probability mirrors to lose them. But, true to their reputation, they just kept coming.

The Canon would never stop coming.

(Much better, the Tourist noted.)

She danced around the central console of her own vessel with Ashlyn, dressed in her white lace shirt and grey hybrid jumper. And oh, what a double-act they made! They were to piloting a hyper-advanced narrative waverider as Abbott and Costello were to physical comedy – they were Laurel and Hardy, Ant ‘n’ Dec, Cheese and Crackers!

Speaking of the latter…

The Tourist furrowed her brow and took a long drag from her cigarette as she spotted, in the corner of her eye, crumbs fall to the floor from the crackers that Shona was loudly munching on while studiously monitoring the tactical readout on the viewscreen. Even the Tourist’s shadow seemed independently disapproving, she noted its stern posture with its hands on its hips, before she realised that she was emulating the same stance…

She turned to see Miranda zipping across controls on the upper-levels that now existed, and Pathway was charging up a comically large directed energy weapon – preparing to deliver a swift and explosive refutation to the Canon.

At that moment, an entitlement-class torsion missile detonated off the bow (if a pyramid vessel can be said to have such a thing) and – to the Tourist’s irritation – scrambled all the controls’ functions.

“Miranda,” she called to her rollerblading companion, who was continuing to ascend up to the sixth level that seemed to have suddenly sprung into existence. “Get these systems under control, they’ve got me flying on inverted!”

“What’s wrong with inverted?” Shona grumbled through a mouthful of crackers.

“Everything’s wrong with inverted!” the Tourist and Ashlyn snapped back.

Pathway slammed the release on their ship’s entrance portal and heaved her energy weapon into an aiming position at the first of the Canon’s streaming pods.

“They’re broadcasting this?” Ashlyn exclaimed. “They must be upset!”

“Five women existing in an independent narrative? Of course they’re upset!” Miranda called down from the seventeenth level. “Just be glad that the first thing I did was mute their repeating comms at us about how we’re unrea—"

Another torsion missile detonated, this time triggering the activation of random systems. Whatever was said next went entirely unheard by Ashlyn Oswin, as she was enveloped in an emergency teleportation field.

Her form shattered into its component molecules, tumbling through unconventional space. The Pyroclastic Kingdoms of Shuntspace, the Stellar Engines of the Dead Star Nine, the Interpluvial Helix – all these places and more, until she arrived (thankfully with a successful reconstruction) on the most exciting, most luminous world she could hope to be.

Earth.

*

D’you remember the first time you went to the beach?

There’s that moment where you come over that first hill and catch a glimpse of how the sea spans the horizon. Your young mind can’t quite comprehend its expanse, all you can do is become lost in how the light dances on the waves and watch the rolling tides.

Battlefields are like that too. But instead of the sea, it seems like an equally vast plain of cold and muddy morass. It is the frigid air that is the rolling tide, the vast interconnected network of barbed wire that is the light upon the waves, as the mind attempts to untangle what it is bearing witness to.

And it’s not true, of course – the expanse of it. No, not on this particular battlefield. The average amount of space between opposing trenches was no more than a few hundred yards at most…

Ashlyn had materialised in the heart of No Man’s Land.

Scanning the horizon, she saw two strange rectangular boxes sitting on a distant hill as the only notable landmark that wasn’t wreathed in wire. She thought of the others, where they must be now, whether they would escape, if they could possibly find her, and if she was herself stepping into far greater danger here.

But as she warily stepped forward, it was not the staccato beat of single-shot gunfire that greeted her, nor the bellowing of orders from a captain.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?

It was singing.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

Ashlyn reached the top of a muddy ridge and saw something she wouldn’t soon forget.

A great crowd of brown and green and grey uniforms stood together, more than she could count. Some shook hands, some held onto each others’ shoulders, medics tended to the wounded on both sides.

Hateful old men would do their best to ensure that nothing like this would happen again. And their evil will endure, taking ever new forms, combat against which may well be eternal – their enmity forever unslaked.

But for this single moment in history, it was two voices that joined as one, people who realised that they had no reason to hate one-another, and – however fleeting it may have seemed – the human spirit won out.

And Ashlyn, who had seen much of this evil and would fight against it with every ounce of her being regardless of whether it was a winning battle or not, was resolute that the same spirit could prevail again.

She smiled as a bear of a German soldier joined the crowd and bellowed in

Es ist in jedem Anbeginn,
das Ende nicht mehr weit
wir kommen her und gehen hin,
und mit uns geht die Zeit

The song faded from Ashlyn’s ears, as if some kind of barrier had been surreptitiously placed between them, and she found herself moving – only half-aware of where she was going – towards an old man who looked every bit a stranger to this place as she did.

She noticed that there was only one box on the horizon now. Odd…

He stood away from the crowd. His clothes were ripped and torn; Ashlyn momentarily mistook the visible tufts of red velvet sticking through his coat for blood as she got closer. The thick, furrowed eyebrows betrayed a kindly-looking face, and his untidy mop of curled grey hair was anything but regulation-length for a soldier.

She couldn’t understand what it was that stirred in her, compelled her to keep walking towards him. It was like something written into her organic circuitry and she’d just learned how to read.

She didn’t know why she smiled at this stranger who – upon facing her – looked as if he were seeing the face of an old friend.

He said a name, but it was not her own.

I think you know who it was, and she went along with it regardless.

*

“Curator!” a young lieutenant approached in some distress. “The Canon is going down, what are your orders?”

They had sustained a hit to their ventral cannon which caused a wildcat destabilisation of the Lore Drive, not to mention their streaming pods had been picked off one-by-one, bringing a premature end to their four-hour broadcast.

“Curator!”

The Curator stood there, dazed, watching the cascading explosion cause a major breach in their now disordered hull. His wispy blond hair looked like an independent sentient being from how it stood on his head as power transferred to the inertia dampers.

“Your uniform, lieutenant,” the Curator spoke at last, his voice sounding as if it were light-years away.

“My uniform?”

“I see you have deigned to impress your peers and superiors by modelling it on the Imperial battle-dress uniform.”

“Yes, sir…” An alarm began to blare, signalling the bridge crew to abandon ship.

The Curator then rounded on him, bellowing in his face as the alarm blared louder. “AND YET, you have misplaced no fewer than THREE essential canonical details, aligning yourself not with your duties as a canonical curator, but a lowly creator! The punishment for this fakery carries a ship-wide reprimand, followed by immediate excision by airlock.”

He needn’t have bothered, for the bridge was consumed with flame and the Canon was no more.

*

It only took a few minutes for the familiar pyramid vessel to materialise and for the other four women to come rushing out to find Ashlyn, who stood waiting with an expectant look on her face, before plunging herself into the arms of a welcoming group hug.

“We were terribly worried!” said the Tourist. “Luckily, Miranda was able to track the emergency teleport’s coordinates.”

“Turns out that was on the seven-hundred-and-fifth level,” Miranda grinned. “But we’ve managed to size things down to normal again. Hopefully…”

Shona nibbled on a chocolate bourbon, offering the pack around. “Well, now that we’re all back together, let’s go and find a happy story.”

“About that…” Ashlyn grabbed Pathway by the hand and pulled her and the group over to the top of the ridge, revealing the sight of the Christmas Armistice.

“It would appear that we’re in one…”

Ashlyn thought back on the strange old man. They hadn’t spoken for very long at all. Indeed, she hadn’t really been sure what to say, but she felt in a way she couldn’t quite describe that what had passed between them carried the weight of many years.

She was certain that, in some fashion, she may well have just saved the old man’s life, and that some invisible purpose within her had been fulfilled – for the last time.

But now, the time had come to revel in merriment, as the soldiers started up their song again in a gleeful encore, and the five heroines were moved to join.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?


​

By Sean Dillon, who is the new talented editor at Arcbeatle Press. Get the autographs now.
Art by Bri Crozier, who is just really damn good at what they do.

Oh, and this one is a bit darker than the others. Still a comedy story, still good fun and VERY GOOD, but delves into a few things that might not be for you today! Use your discretion :).

Go On, Toddle Along
An Exciting Adventure with The Tourist and Ashlyn Oswin

TW: Implied rape invocation, racial slurs.

As the Black Pyramid dematerialized, it made the groaning wheezing sound typically heard when Crawling plays on the radio. The sky was an evergreen cloudless blue as the remains of the moon were shattering down towards the orphanage of disabled puppies. There were a number of reasons why the moon was destroyed, among them being the belief that using nuclear weapons actually solves problems. As highlighted by the charred remains of a number of unnamed puppies who just wanted love and affection, this is not the case.
As the Black Pyramid hurtled through the bloody recesses of time and space, the destruction of the moon was not on Ashlyn Oswin’s mind. There were a number of more pressing things that she was dealing with, the least of which being the dead. For starters, there’s the Black Pyramid itself. As anyone who has been within it first notices, the interiors are far too large to fit within the exterior proportions. Not that they were all that large compared to a typical pyramid, but there was a slight size increase compared to what one would expect. They were designed with an air of gothic, albeit a gothic inspired by someone who has never experienced a work in the gothic tradition. Which is to say that there were a bunch of bones scattered around the walls and there weren’t that many sources of light. At times, Ashlyn could barely see a thing.
Then, of course, there was the woman she was traveling with. Most people called her the Tourist, if only to stop her from going on a long, rather tangential speech about how no one could ever know her true identity as it was forsaken to the cruel horrors of the universe, horrors which she fights day in day out, without want for reward, recognition, or friendship, Horrors that have taken so much from her, so many she cared for, and so forth. She would then go on to list these people at length in a way that made her seem like the true victim as opposed to those who died horribly. (Notable examples include Rey Taylor, who was turned into mush by traveling to a parallel universe of magic talking ponies, Mary Jones, who asphyxiated after resetting time to its proper place, and Dina Noble, who had some rather unfortunate experiences she, in the Tourist’s telling, begged to forget.)
The Tourist was a lean, almost cockroach-like, older woman, roughly in her early 50’s, and showed it. Though her hair was a curly brown done up in a pompadour and her skin smooth as a chameleon, beneath her eyes, inside her soul, was someone who constantly did the right thing, no matter the cost. Even if she had to kill, slaughter, maim, or exterminate to get it done, she would do what she deemed was necessary. The Tourist was dressed in a black trench coat (which she considered putting spikes on before rejecting it due to not being able to make it work with the trench coat’s fabric), black pants, a white shirt, a black tie, black sunglasses with circular frames, a cigarette perpetually hanging out of her mouth (though Ashlyn never saw it lit), and pink ballerina shoes. Her black jackboots had not yet arrived. Indeed, they were five years late despite her having a time machine that could arrive at the exact moment they were shipped mere moments after being ordered. Which was a shame since the Kreesus Man was the only thing that brought her true joy. (Well, that and hate fucking.)
“Something on your mind,” asked the Tourist. This was not done out of genuine curiosity so much as it was a calculated move in service to a larger scheme. Her traveling partner was in a bit of a mood. It was the kind of mood where it would be allowed to simmer if not questioned, and explode if it were. The traveling partner was a young 20 something with short brown hair cut into a bob just slightly long enough to barely miss the shoulders. Much like the Tourist, she was lean albeit more athletically so. More a dancer than cockroach (these were her shoes after all). She had the face of a movie star just waiting for her big break as opposed to the school teacher she ostensibly was. The Tourist’s current traveling partner, much like her previous partners, was dressed in a rather short blue skirt that emphasized her breasts, a frilly bow behind her head, and some basic high heels. She exuded an air of kindness and generosity. And yet, there was a wicked smile beneath the sweetness. It was a very Hufflepuff smile, the kind that no one suspects until there’s a sword coming out from you. You’d see the sword coming, Hufflepuffs always stab people in the front. But, as with the case of most self-proclaimed Ravenclaws, you’d be too busy lapping up your own cleverness to notice it happening. It was this, among other things, that ultimately pushed the Tourist towards asking the question to her traveling partner. She was, after all, always in the mood for a good old fashioned hate fuck.
“Well,” said Ashlyn after a moment’s thought, “I’ve been thinking.” Well, that’s a problem, thought the Tourist. Best fix that after the hate fuck.
“Thinking about what, love?”
“About these adventures we’ve been having.”
“W-what do you mean?”
“Well, to stick with some of the more recent ones, there was that robot you pushed out of a hot air balloon made out of the flesh of orphan street urchins.”
“To be fair, I did it because his robot army was plotting to overthrow the Queen of England and his death was the only way to stop them.”
“Then there was the pacifistic death bot you taught the necessity of killing.”
“Only other death bots! Besides, everyone knows pacifism never works. If anyone ever tried it, they would soon realize the futility of the deed. There are evils in this world who would rather all of us die. Barbarians just waiting to overthrow our freedoms, take away our friends. I needed to teach it the futility of pacifism before it got itself murdered by the hard truths of the world we live in!”
“And then we blew up the Enchanted Wood.” Ashlyn, notably, did not name the horrid sight, the blackest gnome, who, along with a pair of peg wooden dolls, helped them in their... adventure in the Enchanted Wood.
“Bah! Better to blow up all fairy tale lands then let them be converted by the Dredded foot soldiers of the Robotmen!” She perked up, hoping her traveling partner picked up on her pun. If she did, she was confused by its relevance to the nature of the Robotmen. They were not so much jack booted thugs of an authoritarian police state who dealt in order through subjugation, but rather an insidious threat dressed in utopian ideals with a fascist undercurrent simmering beneath the surface like a bag of cocaine that has just been ripped open in the insides of a Floridian man trying very hard not to look suspicious and failing miserably. Even then, the pun worked better in prose than spoken verbally.
“And then, you ruined my date with Graelyn because you were, and I quote, bored.”
“Well, that date was going to crap anyways.” The Tourist had to be careful with this next bit. Go too far, and she leaves forever without the hate fuck or attitude adjustment. Not far enough, and the plan’s ruined.
“Then,” Ashlyn continued, on a roll with her list of adventures, “we helped a bank kidnap and brainwash an intelligent life form.”
“Oh come on, it wasn’t that intelligent. Plus, the stock market needed it. Do you know how many corporations could have lost .02% of their net growth?”
“But what really hit me was our most recent adventure. It started when we got into an argument over the ethics of our adventures. A lot of our adventures have had what can only be described as… terrible results.”
“And I told you,” with an emphasis on you that only a Scottish sounding person can pull off, “that this is a hard world that requires hard decisions. Sometimes, there are only bad choices and we must pick amongst them.”
“Right, that’s what you said. And then, you put me in charge of our next adventure. We landed on the moon in the not too distant future and discovered it had been infected with carnivorous giant spiders.”
“Truly, a realistic thing to encounter in the vastly cruel cosmos.”
“We were trapped on the moon along with a platoon of Space Marines.”
“Who deserved all our support, as all troops do.”
“Who then died.”
“A tragic, but necessary sacrifice.”
“Leaving us with their nuclear weapons to defeat the Spiders.”
“And I left the decision up to you. Luckily, you made the right call in the end. Who knows what those dreadful spiders would have done if left to roam the universe.”
“Except… I almost aborted the bomb.”
“…YOU WHAT!” The Tourist was furious. Her traveling partners were typically stupid by design, but never to this degree. How could she let her down like this. The Tourist would have to scrap her sooner than she expected if this was the level of fuck up to be seen. She calmed herself quickly. There was still the potential hate fuck after all.
Ashlyn was not to be detoured. “I got a sense from them that they weren’t inherently hostile. That they reacted to us with violence because the Marines shot first. Were we to leave them alone, they would have lived peacefully on the moon. Who knows what cultures we’ve murdered, what lives they lived. I was about to abort the bomb when something hit me. Something made a horrifying amount of sense, such that I didn’t have enough time to abort the bomb. About not just that adventure, but all our adventures. It had been nagging at me for quite some time until then, but when it hit, I was awash with a sense of overwhelming clarity.”
The Tourist was starting to sweat. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that somehow, every element in our adventures is connected to the television show Doctor Who. That’s what I’m saying.” Shit, thought the Tourist. On the bright side, at least she’s never heard of Lady Aescalapi… Axeliu… Ascelopolis… That woman I had a drunken one night stand with after helping Better Living Industries defeat the Fabulous Killjoys.
“It is… only a coincidence! I do not even know who David Tennant is!” There was a bit too much emphasis on the word coincidence for Ashlyn to believe that it was. That, and the Tourist was moving a bit too close to Ashlyn for her liking. “Besides, we’ve had adventures that weren’t inspired by Doctor Who. Remember the time we stopped those reds from stealing the Martian death weapons? Or the time we sacrificed my own people for the safety of the universe. Or the time you got kidnapped and ravished by the Immortal Transphobe while I teamed up with my evil past self (who I had no idea even existed) to fend off the space police who were miffed because I created all life in the universe?”
“Ok, I think that last one happens to a different member of the, for lack of a better term, fam,” though Ashlyn did make a mental note to kick the Immortal Transphobe in the balls should they ever meet, “but I damn well know those are all plots to Doctor Who stories.”
“Erm... so what?” said the Tourist with a hint of desperation poorly disguising itself as flippancy, “So what if these stories are all like Doctor Who stories? Surely we can live and love happily! Besides,” the Tourist shifted her position such that she was very close to the Black Pyramid’s one door, barring any potential escape (not that one would want to leap into the veins of time), “if you want to avoid the story of Doctor Who, then this is the perfect opportunity to subvert it! Surely you remember that in that story, the Doctor and his companion drifted apart. But here, Here! We can come closer together. We can do what you always wanted to do: make sweet, hot passionate love! You’ve made the hard choices I make every single day. You understand the necessity of the world we live in. The cruel nature of life! I can make things so much better for you!”
And for a moment, Ashlyn paused. Not for long, of course. Where she the other one, the one she was blatantly ripping off, she might’ve been tempted to give the Tourist a snog and a hate fuck. She might’ve even done it. (Though, in the other one’s defense, were their roles swapped, she would’ve thought the same of Ashlyn.) But there was one thing that prevented her from doing so, the thing that was number one on her mind. It wasn’t so much that they were ripping off Doctor Who as it was the way they were doing it. Their story wasn’t fully Doctor Who per say. It was a bit grimmer, a bit darker, and a bit more fascist than a typical Doctor Who story (which usually aired towards a naïve liberalism). And she knew full well where her story would end:
A woman who died to inspire a hero to do dark, awful things to bring her back. The Tourist would rip time asunder and betray her own people in the name of the Lost Lenore. What drama, what consequences would there be to this tragic affair? This ancient story. This fairy tale. Obviously, they wouldn’t be able to be together in the end. Such stories never allow for the lovers to be together in the end. They would be separated. Usually, such things would be something along the lines of Orpheus and Eurydice, but their adventures would never allow something as light and fluffy as that to happen. It would have to be darker, and Ashlyn had an imagination. The Tourist’s people would offer a trade. Ashlyn, it would turn out, could birth machines such as the Black Pyramid because of some technobabble that only made aesthetic sense. If the Tourist were to allow them to use her as a means of reproduction, to create more, better traveling machines, then her traveling partner would be allowed to live (pacified, of course, so she wouldn’t run off). If the Tourist did not, Ashlyn would be killed. The Tourist would agonize over the decision, but in the end she would make the hard decision. She would say yes to her people and allow Ashlyn to live forever in bondage. It was, after all, for the greater good.
Not wanting that ending, Ashlyn asked a very simple question before landing the coup de grâce. “What’s my name?”
“What,” the Tourist retorted with a small laugh within.
“My name. We’ve been traveling for so long, surely you of all people must know my name.”
“O-of, Of course! Of course I know your name!”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s… It’s… It’s… Cassandra?” Ashlyn responded to the wrong answer by punching the Tourist in the face. There was a rather nasty shiner on her left eye and the doors to the Black Pyramid were wide open. The Tourist almost fell out, but she held onto the frame of the entrance with great difficulty. She was too focused on holding on for dear life to form coherent sentences, only making snarls and animalistic growls that had the vague outline of language. Ashlyn raced to the console that controlled the Black Pyramid with great difficulty. But it was as if there was a corridor of air helping her along towards her goal lit up by actual lights. The Tourist was starting to lose her grip by the time Ashlyn reached the console. The Tourist gave her traveling partner a look which pleaded for mercy.
“Oh fuck off! Fuck off you twat! And forget you ever met me!!!” And with that, the Tourist fell into the veins of time, left adrift in the past, present, future, and neverwas while the doors of the Black Pyramid slammed shut. Ashlyn sighed, slightly relieved. Self-preservation, even for someone with her character, trumps horniness in the end. Ashlyn looked around. The interior of the Black Pyramid had shifted slightly. No longer the design of someone who had listened to far too much Linkin Park, now it looked like the design of someone who listened to far too much My Chemical Romance. There was still an edge to the design, but it was a different sort of edge, one that allowed for Queen, Janelle Monáe, spadging on sigils, and other queer things. The bones were still there, but there was an artfulness to their design, and they weren’t the only ornaments affixed to the walls of the Black Pyramid. Moreover, Ashlyn could actually see what the majority of the Black Pyramid looked like. There were posters of rock bands, bookshelves full of stories waiting to be annotated, a jukebox with a guitar leaning on it. Ashlyn looked at her surroundings and was pleased. She was less pleased by the clothes she was wearing. They just weren’t her style. And so, she traveled down the corridors, which seemed deeper than they once were, perhaps even diving into infinity, knowing instinctively where to go.
***
It had been a rough few months since Colonel Eliezer Levenston-Stalworth had been commissioned to defend the British dominion over India. They had recently locked a fusilier the troops called The Big Crazy for repeated misconduct, not the least of which being preventing several high ranking officers from doing what needs to be done to boost morale and keep those wogs in line. Natives, the Colonel corrected himself, we’re supposed to call them natives. However, he has been making a lot of ruckus as of late and has threatened to murder the next man to enter his cell. Sure, it was because he was being held without charges and forcibly having his hair cut to below regulation, but he’s been a troublemaker for so long. The Scot needed to be taught the proper British way of things.
Furthermore, the natives were beginning to revolt against the various platoons sanctioned to bring order to this fertile, savage land. They did not appreciate the troops slaughtering their cows to make steaks out of, nor did they like being stripped naked and beaten with sticks for daring to protest their lot in life. They had begun to form resistance groups under a fool named Gandhi who thought that non-violence could actually stand a chance against the might of the British military.
And to top it all off, a race of sea-wogs had surfaced and had aligned itself with the natives. They claim to be intellectually superior, but if they were, they would have used their technology to aid in suppressing the encroaching Nazis, natives, and other lesser peoples. (On the bright side, some of the men had rustled a herd of cows, so steak would be on the menu tonight.) All these things were on the Colonel’s mind when he heard news that a strange woman had been found nearby. He recalled his old ally the Tourist who helped fight against the barbarous hordes of Yeti and the insidious might of the Robotmen, who dared to subvert the glory of the British Empire. Perhaps she could help with their little problem.
It was reported that she was found lying unconscious on a mound of manure with a robot standing next to her. It was wearing a dapper hat and holding a box slightly smaller than a pair of Jackboots in her size…
***
Alice River was in the twilight of her spring when the death bots attacked. She had been teaching History for the past ten years. She was beloved by her students, the faculty, and had even been in meetings with several Labour and Liberal Democrats, though she herself was a member of the Scottish National Party. Her courses typically consisted of walkthroughs in various pre-English civilizations and how they led to the modern world, with a direct focus on the fictions told in those eras such that it was unsure by those who hadn’t taken her courses if she was actually a history teacher at all. Those who did knew she was always talking about History.
Her husband, Roland Williams, was a nurse who worked at a nearby hospice. When he started his medical career, Roland had wanted to be a doctor. However, as he began his medical degree, it occurred to him that his strengths were in assisting those in need. He could do a diagnosis like no one else, but he was stronger doing the equally complex work of organizing a hospital to have all the right people in the right place, to keep the patients comfortable in between the doctor’s visits, and to guide them to the next stage in life. He had been friends with Alice since they were kids and it was only before they went to college that they realized their feelings for one another. (Indeed, they were the last people in their small town to realize that.) They were married a year after they graduated college and loved each other for all the years that followed. They never had kids (Alice was infertile), but that didn’t dampen their relationship (bar one fight before they got married).
What did dampen their relationship was the death bots attacking. One of them struck Roland in his right shoulder. He was lucky to have survived. Practically everyone else was dying, Alice could hear the screams of her students, her fellow faculty, and all the other people wandering the university grounds. She was awash with dread and misery. The only thing keeping her going was her husband, who was screaming in pain. Fortunately, one of her students was with Alice and was able to help carry her husband to a safe location. The student’s name was Bob Potterson, and she was a rather odd student. Officially, she wasn’t a student at all. She couldn’t afford to go to college, so she worked in the cafeteria serving chips to the students. On her off hours, Bob would sneak into various lectures held in the university. The one she cared about the most, however, was Alice’s. There was a small degree of a crush to this (though Bob recognized that such a relationship wouldn’t work out), but it was mostly due to how invigorated and excited Alice was about history, about the people who once lived, the stories they told, the stories lost, all the things that make us who we are. It always put a smile on Bob’s face. Alice, when she found out about Bob, let her stay on and acted as a personal tutor. She liked Bob’s smile and how she asked seemingly obvious, yet unasked questions.
The three found themselves in one of the classrooms. It wasn’t that large, roughly large enough to fit forty students at a time. But it was enough to keep Roland alive. He weakly told the two that he was going to be okay, but his voice refused to lie to them. On a normal day, such an injury would mean Roland would lose his arm. It would take him years to relearn all the things he did with just one arm. He would have to stop nursing for a while, maybe forever. Alice would still be there for him, maybe take a semester or two off to help with the early transition. But it would still hurt.
Fortunately, this was not a normal day. For as Alice was tending Roland’s wounds as best she could, a wheezing groaning sound akin to a dying llama filled the room. The three were awash with a wind from nowhere. In its place, landing precisely atop the tables, was a Black Pyramid. In the direction facing the three was a door with a novelty maple leaf for a knob. The door opened rather smoothly; in its frame was a woman. At first, she was silhouetted by the light from within, almost blindingly bright. But as she stepped closer, they could make more of her out. The woman was dressed in a purple suit with a loose black tie dangling around her white shirt. She was wearing a bowler hat with a small bisexual flag stitched to its rim. She was wearing a fashionable pair of flip flops with a smile on their heels. She had a tattoo on the left side of her neck of a raven flying high. Her hair was cut in a bob just long enough to not reach her shoulders. She was lean, she was confident, and she had the closed smile of someone who had just recently thought about the prospect of space-age wiccan polyamory.
Alice was intrigued by the woman, but somewhat weary of the Black Pyramid. There was an implication of banal cruelty to its design. One of someone who thought brutalism wasn’t brutal enough. And yet, the woman inside seemed to subvert those expectations. She was like the imaginary friend everyone had, the one who wanted to overthrow the government because it was a bit too cruel. Roland was a bit too dazed and confused to have an opinion. Alice seemed at ease with the woman, so he tried to relax. But there was something about that smile of hers that made him think of dashing adventurers who get too close to danger and leave too many wounded behind. Though, again, he was a bit too dazed to have a full opinion. Bob, on the other hand, had a toothy grin on her face. She could tell the woman was her kind of people. She stood with a confidence Bob wished to have in herself. She was sure Helen would be fine with a threesome, right?
(Unbeknownst to Bob, Helen was already in the Black Pyramid, along with a bunch of other students, faculty, and people in the line of death bot fire. A clever plan all things considered, evacuating as many people as possible so the death bots will think they have murdered everyone and move on to somewhere else. That way, mostly everyone will live. The woman thought about the life she was about to go into. About all the places she could see. If danger came, she’d meet it as best she could. Sometimes, she thought, violence is necessary. But only a twat thinks it’s the only solution. Who knows, she thought, maybe I’ll run into her again. And then she laughed in her head and turned towards those outside the Black Pyramid with a polite smile on her face.)
“Hello. My name’s Ashlyn Oswin. Need a lift?”
    

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