fic: Women in Western Political Thought (Doctor Who; Amy/Rory; AU)
leupagus is hosting a Damn, Your Fandom Is Good At What You Do Fest. The below is sadly no longer what I do, but it is what I know best.
Women in Western Political Thought
Doctor Who ; Amy/Rory ; 1500 words ; no content notes ; also at the AO3.
In which Amy and Rory are philosophy MA students and Amy is into student politics. Featuring lots of other New Who characters.
There had probably once been a desk where Rory was sitting, but it had drowned in a sea of paper, with journal articles scattered everywhere and covered in green highlighter and Rory's distinctive scrawl. Amy shook her head as she wandered over, fighting her way through the undergrads milling around and moving a printout of 'The Unreality of Time' to one side to create enough space to put two coffees down. Rory looked up, blinking in a somewhat dazed fashion.
"You are a lifesaver," he said after a moment, taking in her arrival complete with fresh caffeine.
"You work too hard," Amy said, kissing him before going to steal a chair from some first years, ignoring their protests. "It's only the third week of term, you can't have deadlines already."
"No, but this Space and Time module is making my head explode," said Rory. "It's brilliant, I love it, but oh my god. My brain actually hurts trying to make sense of all of this."
Amy laughed. "Well, what did you expect? What's the new guy like anyway?"
"The lecturer? Eccentric, even by the department's standards. No name, insists on just being called 'the Doctor', looks about twenty five but has a load of papers and books published and wears tweed and bow ties all the time."
"Oh," she said with sudden recognition, "yeah, I've seen him around! I thought he was a new student or something. Maybe he'll come to drinks on Friday, he sounds entertaining."
Rory's eyes lit up. "Yeah, hopefully, I'll have to ask him."
Amy raised an eyebrow. "Oh, someone totally has a crush."
"What? Of course I don't, that would be immature and ridiculous."
Amy kept looking at him, trying not to laugh.
"Oh all right. A bit. Maybe."
"Just please tell me it's not the bow tie that's doing it for you, because I am not going to start wearing one, and neither are you."
"It is not the bow tie," he assured her. "In any case, you can't tell me you go to Martha's seminars because of your deep love of bioethics."
"Oh shut up." Amy punched his arm, grinning. "There is totally overlap with the stuff I'm doing with River on feminism and bodily autonomy."
"Sure, you keep telling yourself that. How's River's course going?"
"Really good, yeah. We're doing feminist critiques of Rawls at the moment, you know, all the head of the household nonsense he comes out with."
"He amended that in his second edition though, right?"
"True, but there are other issues as well, so we're talking about some of the reformulations from Nussbaum and Okin and so on."
"That's cool. Actually --" Rory fumbled for a folder and flicked through his reading list, "-- yeah, I'm doing a week on Nussbaum later in the semester in my global ethics course, I might come to that seminar if you could send me the lecture notes. When is it?"
"Nine o'clock on Friday," she informed him glumly. "Don't worry, it's not so bad, we all go and hang out in River's office and she makes coffee and brings muffins. Her coffee is amazing actually, she picked up loads from when she was travelling during her sabbatical."
"Come for the coffee, stay for the feminism. I can work with that." Rory makes a note in his phone. "Oh wow," he says after looking at his email, "reading groups sign ups are coming in quickly now. Donna's forwarded on a bunch complete with note that she doesn't give a crap about Hegel or Kant and that we should speak to the original senders directly if we have any question."
Amy burst out laughing and leaned over to have a look. "And our departmental secretary continues to the best departmental secretary!"
"Pretty much. Okay, so most of the regular ones are running - Canton's Aristotle one is running again, Nicomachean Ethics this time, which might be useful, and Rose and Mickey are kicking around ideas for starting some kind of experimental philosophy working group after that conference last year."
Amy shrugged. "I'll be interested to see how that pans out, but I don't think I'm going to have time for that one unless they need the occasional test subject or something. Anything else look interesting?"
"Most of the usual boring dead guys are present and accounted for, and also -- oh, god. Okay, I'm going to tell you the reading group, you have to guess whose bright idea it was."
"Yeah?"
"Freud," Rory said with a groan.
"Oh, that has to be Jack." Amy rolled her eyes. "I mean, Freud's socially significant, sure, but he was a total hack and not that philosophically interesting even if you are looking at the evolution of sexual ethics."
"Pretty much. So Jack's presentation in the graduate seminar this week should be, well, interesting."
"It'll be hilarious, which is the main thing. Oh by the way, he says he's getting some people together to go out and try that new fancy gay bar that night if you're up for it?"
Rory winced. "So the whole weekend would be a write-off, then. Hmm."
"Oh go on. I promise I won't let him cover you in glitter again."
He sighed. "Fine. We should probably go to protect the new people in any case, they won't know what they're getting themselves in for."
"How noble of you."
Amy swung her bag up onto the desk and started digging around for her planner. "Okay, so I've finished my nomination form for postgraduate councillor, could you be my second?"
"As I don't want to sleep on the sofa tonight, sure." Amy stuck her tongue out at him as he grabbed the form and duly signed. "I don't know what's wrong with you that you want to do another year of student politics."
"Oh, but winding up all the investment bankers in training is so much fun!" Amy beamed. "The science departments are trying to get some kind of Young Conservative slate going - if they get in I will destroy them. It'll be great."
"Well, rather you than me," Rory said, patting her hand. "Just remember me while you're taking over the world, won't you?"
"Don't worry - when the revolution comes, you will be safe. Kovarian and the rest of her little cohort won't know what hit them, however."
Amy's phone rang. It was Vastra, the Women's Officer, and she sounded harried. "Vastra, wait, hang on a second, slow down. Wait, are you serious? Okay yes, I'll be there in a minute. Bye."
She pulled a face as she hung up. "Some fuckery going down with the councillor elections, some of those bellends from Debating Society are trying to table an emergency motion for a full review of all the representative councillors on grounds of, I don't know, there aren't enough able-bodied straight white guys running the union or something. Vastra's putting a strategy together and I'd better go help out."
"If you need back up on anything, let me know," Rory offered. "I make a mean poster."
Amy smiled. "I know you do. Sorry to rush off - call me when you're getting lunch, I'll come see you then."
"You planning on doing any actual philosophy today?"
"Eh, we'll see. Should probably team up with Jenny to make sure Vastra doesn't murder anybody first."
"Actually, yes, that's probably a priority. Godspeed!" Rory saluted.
"Have fun doodling love hearts on your lecture notes."
Rory rolled his eyes and Amy strode off, coffee in one hand and phone in the other as she started sending out calls to arms. The current LGBT councillor was apt to forget that he was supposed to represent people other than gay men, but with well-timed applications of her feminist bisexual fury she'd manage to keep him relatively in check last year, and anyway, his job was on the line. She already had half a dozen texts from other concerned councillors and collided with Sarah Jane, the union's general manager.
"Oh Amy, good. Are you off to see Vastra? I'm a bit afraid she's going to start breaking things."
"Yeah, just got the call."
"All right, well, obviously I'm meant to be entirely impartial, but for the love of god shut Kovarian down before she does some serious damage. I was kind of hoping she just wouldn't come back after her year abroad, but I guess this is why I can't have nice things."
"Damage control on Vastra, stop Kovarian, check. Also you still owe me a drink for going to that NUS training event over the summer, by the way, that was a seriously painful experience."
"Yes I do - all right, what are you doing Friday?"
"Gay bar crawling with Jack Harkness, so help me."
"Dear god. Okay, well, just give me a call whenever you've recovered from that. So sometime next year then?"
"I find your lack of faith disturbing," Amy said, and then there was an ominous crashing noise from upstairs. "Oh crap, I think Vastra just threw something. Okay I'm going, wish me luck!"
"Just try and survive in one piece, that's all I'm asking," said Sarah Jane. "Good luck."
Amy ran for it.
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