painful Missy thoughts

@you-have-to-use-your-imagination​ and anyone else who’s interested feel free to jump in because I am upset about this

I’m talking about this clip from World Enough and Time, from 1:00 to 1:20 and that’s all

TW: quick and vague references to mental illness and suicidal ideation

disclaimer: I can’t GIF so there are a lot of screenshots here

We step in at this point:

Missy discovers that the colony ship is from Mondas and she jumps up to go and tell the Doctor; Razor pulls a gun, which just seems to annoy her. Until now she’s basically been ignoring everything he said. She turns back to him and starts to threaten him, and he says this:

and while he says it Missy circles him and her face goes from THIS:

to THIS:

look at the strain!!!!

I can’t capture this in screenshots but she shakes her head, and her mouth twitches

she doesn’t know this is her past self yet but this one line gets to her so much and she’s biting so much back to keep from reacting

and because Michelle Gomez is *chefs kiss* she gets it all across in this single shot

because she knows!!! she knows she’ll never be free!!!!!! or at least she thinks it very strongly

and here is this random man giving voice to her biggest fear because he knows it because he’s her and imagine!!!! if someone stood in front of you and said your worst insecurity, the cruellest thing you’ve ever told yourself in your own mind, out loud to you like it’s just the truth????????

so she grimaces and she shakes her head but it’s not for him - it’s that thing you do when you’re pushing down the bad thought. we know that she’s battling with herself, literally, on the outside, but she doesn’t; for her the fight is on the inside and she’s trying so hard not to let the bad thought win

and idk, as a person with OCD it just looks so familiar like, shake your head like an etch-a-sketch to wipe away the intrusive thought

but the intrusive thought is standing there in front of you and he just keeps talking

but she keeps trying

the teeth!!!! when I’m writing Missy and I talk about her baring her teeth this is what I mean because look at her!! look at the pain in that almost-smile! look how close she is to the edge!!!! she looks like she could scream or kill something or break down in tears any second now and it hurts me

but he just keeps going

that face???? that’s not confusion. she isn’t trying to figure out what he means.

that’s realisation, and resignation

but she still doesn’t know about Simm or Bill so why???? what is she realising?? why is she resigned???

because Missy doesn’t know what’s real!!! Missy doesn’t know what’s right!!! I know it sounds weird but she’s so trusting in a begrudging sort of way because she doesn’t trust herself

someone stands in front of her and says “you hurt somebody and you’ll never be forgiven” and she doesn’t ask who?? she doesn’t ask how?? she just… knows

she just accepts it and for 0.5 seconds every ounce of fight drains out of her

and yes, she gathers herself and keeps threatening, keeps snapping at him, but it’s obvious that she’s shaken to the core and then when he says

and she closes the distance and gets in his face

don’t get me wrong because this is a beautiful shot but I feel like it really misses something that I didn’t even notice on first viewing, which we only see for a split second when Razor throws the gun aside which is

she jams herself up against the gun!!!!!!

Missy doesn’t know that he’s her. Missy doesn’t know what he means yet, not really, but he says “you would never be so self-destructive” and she dares him to shoot her

when she doesn’t know that Razor is Simm!Master, he stands in front of her and points a gun at her and says all of her most painful thoughts out loud

and she shows her teeth and dares him to shoot her

and I just think that that matters

aaaahh im gonna explode i love this scene so much but ive never been able to say anything coherent about it but i did gif this part a while ago:

because youre right the teeth!! she does this when shes threatened!

(here in 8x12 it looks like the doctor is actually about to kill her and she’s really taken aback by it)

but also i feel like theres almost something like pride in that when she says “i havent done anything to his silly little friend”, something like ‘look at my streak of days not murdering people’ because like you said, she’s fighting herself. shes fighting herself this entire finale.

i mean, this is just one interpretation and also ive said it like a hundred times before but i like to read missy as addicted to murder (in the bekdel test theres this exchange after missy shoots someone with an improvised weapon and threatens some other people: RIVER: Missy, this isnt going to work. MISSY: No, no, probably not, but it is fun. I was feeling a bit… zappy. and i love it because it’s so blatantly not about achieving any goal except satisfying the urge to kill someone. anyway:)

world enough is a test. it’s explicitly a test. it’s maybe interesting how missy at first calls it “a ridiculous exercise”  and only when the doctor corrects her saying it’s a test, she says “dont test me eating crisps!”. she tries for exercise first maybe because it takes a bit of the pressure off?

over series 10 shes been steadily getting more freedom, which means more expectations. and this, letting her play doctor who with bill and nardole, could be just another step up of a little more freedom after eaters of light. it could be, you know, practice. but it’s not. it’s a test. it’s pass or fail. if she messes up, if she murders someone, she probably loses the doctor forever, like this is the most the doctor has maybe ever been trying with her and he’s still barely doing anything. if she messes up now, thats it. she has to do this right.

but i dont know if she feels entirely ready? because 1) the exercise/test thing, she kinda tries for ‘hey maybe this isnt sink or swim, maybe this is just one more instance in which i can try to make sense of your confusing Goodness rules in practice and if i do it wrong, well you can tell me off about it later in the vault’ and the doctor’s like ‘no, it’s sink or swim’, and 2) because like you said, she doesnt trust herself. she doesnt know whats right and i dont think she knows what shes going to do.

she gets thrown in the deep end like ‘show me how you manage your addiction with the stressors of the outside world and access to people to kill. because bill and nardole, theyre off-limits, she cant do anything to them because thats game over. shes probably thought about it, she COULD have done it, but she HASNT! she hasnt done anything to his silly little friend!

i think shes a little proud and i think shes REMINDING herself. ‘i havent done anything and i dont have to do anything now! i havent murdered before and i can not murder again’ because the master is super tempting her. he’s really trying to push all her buttons, get her to snap (because she’s him and to see his future self be the way missy is would probably be a threat to him. it’s a direct threat, something he fears (”you mean youre just going to keep me?” he says in last of the time lords) and it would be a real threat to his identity. (if she snaps and tries to kill him and basically goes against the doctor’s orders, that would reassure the master that she’s still him, that he wont change that much, that in the end he’ll still be himself and not just the doctor’s pet. but thats a different topic for a different post)

so anyway i think part of what that “i havent done anything” is, is a last ditch attempt at trying to convince herself Not To Do This. because i mean, look:

shes literally split in two by the light. the master mocks her for her… idk, subjection? to the doctor and that finally makes her stop ignoring him and turn to him with that little smile like ‘someone is about to horribly die now’ (it’s the first time she actually looks at him too)

but then in the next shot we see her from the other side, in the shadow, and shes not smiling on that side

i mean, im projecting a lot more thoughts and feelings into this shot than one could reasonably assume to be actually there, but do you know that feeling when part of you has already decided to do the thing you know youre not supposed to do and is like, already mentally picking weapon and method? and theres another part of you that knows it’s useless to argue with the murder part but is trying to anyway? *points at this gif*

but shes still trying! she warns him! (she actually warns him, or herself, 3 times during this scene. shes really trying really hard) but he interrupts with that “he’ll never forgive you”

and then theres everything you said of course which is perfect and i hate it because it hurts

im just gonna put this gif in here because i already made it anyway so why not

d r e a d

i love what you said about how she’s so strangely trusting. how she just accepts what this apparent stranger tells her. because theres such a feeling of… hmm inevitability to it?

theres this moment also in the bekdel test where river and her are speculating about who’s behind this entire prison scheme and:

missys relationship with herself is so interesting to me. interesting in whatever the opposite is of ‘scientific curiosity’, like, ‘emotional overinvestment’ maybe. when it comes to the whole vault and goodness and the doctor thing, she seems so unsure of herself.

she doesnt know how to interpret all these new emotions and i think she feels very unpredictable to herself. i think she cant predict of herself how shes going to react to things or what shes going to do. which makes 10x11 and 10x12 really precarious! this is her do or die chance to win the doctor’s friendship

(and not even the only one! like if this had been a successful mission she’d have to keep proving herself over and over on every subsequent mission, it’s exhausting and unfair. though then at least maybe she’d gain a little more confidence with every new mission that she could do it)

and she doesnt know that she will succeed. i really dont think she knows. it’s as much of a leap of faith for her as for the doctor (in fact i think in 10x12 once theyve met the master, the doctor is more sure of missy than missy is of herself. the contrast with the master makes the doctor more sure of missy i think. while for missy being confronted with who she was makes her less sure)

that line “i might not be telling the truth” is reminiscent to me of how in eaters of light when the doctor suggests she might be crying to trick him, she’s like ‘oh. yeah maybe’

“sounds about right”, “does sound like the sort of thing i would do”. it’s like she knows one thing for certain about herself and that is that in the end, no matter how hard she tries, no matter whether she can understand it now or not, she will be who she is. she cant escape herself. and thats probably why she dares razor to shoot her right?

Who are you?

I did this for the expressions

knowing John Simm so well you were questioning his disguise all along because you recognised his koala eyes and some of his gestures and his voice (like it was distorted enough for me to question myself but all along I was: is it him?nooo..maybe..dunno) 

Twelve raising an eyebrow