masterfulxxrhythm:

//I have had this in my inbox for a month and struggled over whether it was sent by a Kilgrave stan (in which case I have no interest in answering) or by someone who wants to use this as an informative discourse on degrees of abuse in fictional relationships, and the damage it can do to explore them. 

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are the latter.  Here is a somewhat truncated answer to your question.   

Let me make it clear from the outset: there are few fictional characters I despise more than Kevin Kilgrave.  David Tennant played him with chilling brilliance:  he is the quintessential entitled white perpetrator of rape culture, and serial rapist in his own right.  He is unconscionable and morally unsalvageable, even taking the entirety of his backstory into consideration.  

If I thought that the Master was capable of that specific TYPE of moral depravity, I would never have taken him up as a muse.  Yes, he in many ways fits the profile: he is obsessed with control, he is possessive, and he lacks a basic capacity for empathy, even at times with those whom he professes to love.  However, as a creator of media, however humble, I am ETHICALLY OBLIGATED either to be VERY responsible in my portrayal of rape (looking at YOU, Downton Abbey, bless you), certain to condemn it while continuing to protect the humanization of the victim rather than making her a conduit for shock value (looking at YOU, Game of Thrones, damn you), OR I must omit that content altogether. I have, on this blog, chosen the latter route. 

 I do NOT believe that the Master should be transformed into a rapist, nor do I believe he would enjoy being one:  it is MUCH more gratifying to him to be able to persuade people using his astonishing capacity for emotional and psychological manipulation, for SUGGESTION rather than COMMAND, to do what he asks, rather than to outright coerce them.  An excellent example is his relationship with poor Lucy Saxon, whom he mesmerized with the sheer force of his persuasive ability, and did NOT mind control, yet she was putty in his hands, and certainly a form of victim.   The Master WANTS to be WANTED; he wants to believe that people are fawning over him rapturously of their own volition, or else what’s the point of their worship? This is why, for instance, Missy has repeatedly tried to toxically maneuver the Twelfth Doctor into her arms, from a distance, pulling strings and setting up chains of events that could, or could not, go her way. See the entirety of Clara Osswald’s run.  The Master thrives much more on the danger and risk of chance than on being SURE of WINNING.  This is what makes him/her a Chaotic Evil. 

That’s a primary difference between Kilgrave and the Master: Kilgrave, even when he claims to want Jessica to “choose” him, goes to extraordinary lengths to rig the game so that her consent to her body, her actions, her thoughts, all her  favorite places, activities, and associations, are contaminated by his omnipresence, even buying and masquerading married life in her childhood home which was her PTSD-related coping link to a secure time before he began to abuse her (she would recite the streets in her childhood neighborhood to calm down from a PTSD episode, and he revoked even that).  The Master intentionally affords his targets, particularly the Doctor, more leeway, more freedom of will.  He wants to win the chess game fair and square. He loves the thrill of the challenge of a mind equal in competence and skill to his own.  It gives him more to brag about when he wins.  

Another primary difference, perhaps more important still, is the gender of the “victim” and the relative odds stacked against them:

–Jessica is a woman, and Kilgrave is a man.  The Master and Doctor are both men.  Women are far more likely to be the victims of rape than men; not only statistically, but the whole fabric of modern society is built on outrageously inaccurate and inequitable premises that make women somehow culpable for being sexually violated: everything from verbal harassment to rape. How they dress, how they act–”smile, Jessica”–and so on and so forth, are all ammunition men (and even other women, with internalized misogyny!) use to build cases against the victim.  Though men are certainly victimized as well, the very fact that Jessica is a woman makes her situation with Kilgrave a hundred thousand times worse, and more pertinent to real incidents of abuse.  

–  Kilgrave is capable of wholly eclipsing Jessica’s agency, and rendering her his slave, in mind and body.  The Master and the Doctor are EQUALLY MATCHED in terms of power and ability.  That’s kind of the whole point of their iconography, of their tropes of “two sides of one coin,” “best enemies,” “arch nemeses,” and so on.  

Honestly, there is also the simple fact that, in canon, the Master has never raped the Doctor.  Simple, but profound.  He has attempted physical and emotional violence on him, but not once when he had the Doctor under his control, did he violate him in this most profound of manners. 

I have more points, but they are fine tuned examples of the larger issues I’ve already raised. I hope this is helpful! 

//I got this question on my Master blog, and while this is a Loki blog, I wanted to reblog it here because I want people to be clear on how I feel about Kilgrave.  I’m frankly not interested in interacting with Kilgrave muses.  Way too triggering.  Thanks for understanding.