Torchwood
Notably, the Torchwood fandom is all about the Jack/Ianto. So when I saw a Jack/Gwen tag, I went "oooh...shiny." After all, it is pretty rare to come by.
So I clicked. God forbid. Fic isn't spoilery, nor is my commentary.
I knew it was bad!fic when I read:
Jack could see the tears were welling up behind her eyes. He stepped forward and just hugged her. She finally let the tears fall, sobbing into his shirt. He stroked her hair softly, calming her down, no end. When she finally stopped crying, she drew back.
I know that Gwen's eyes are huge and called anime eyes all around fandom... but are they transparent? Or translucent? And as far as I know, tears have no business being behind the eyes. Also, what is not ending? Also, this breaks one of the few rules I know of fic writing: do not break the waterworks until the end of the first chapter. Delay it as much as possible.
On we proceed, though, with Gwen deciding that she doesn't want to go home. Jack, being the ever considerate leader that he is...
“Of course. Go and get yourself a shower. Go on.” He said with a little push towards the door. She walked out, her head bent in embarassment. She had cried in front of her boss. Great. As soon as she was out of his sight, Jack clicked on the CCTV to check she’d got down to the showers ok. He watched as she took off her jacket, revealing a massive purple bruise on her arm and broke down crying again. She slid down the wall, sobs wracking her body. Jack was there in seconds. He helped her up and hugged her yet again. A hug was possibly the best thing invented.
Go wash, Gwen. You stinky, dirty woman.
Oh, bad Jack! Very, very bad! That is A. voyeurism, and B. sexual harassment.
Psst, author? Jack is immortal, not superhuman. It takes more than a few seconds to get from the CCTV monitors to the showers.
Now, this is Torchwood. I have issues with Gwen having bruises and crying because of them. They fight aliens, they're bound to get injured...oh...wait... author is implying that the bruise isn't alien derived. Bad me. I was too distracted by the evershifting point of view, changes of perspective in the same paragraph make me dizzy.
“Who did this to you?” He asked, not noticing his voice was full of anger. Gwen shook her head, obviously scared of Jack’s anger. “Sorry.” He said regretfully “you don’t know how much I care for you.”
Next, we're supposed to infer that someone hurt Gwen, and I think that someone is supposed to be Rhys. Canon, where the hell are you when I need you to bash impossible!plots over the head with? Abusive!Rhys? That is simply OOC! OMG!!!111!!!one!!!1!!1!a hundred eleven! (sorry, I got carried away by the horror of it all) The OOC, it burnnnns, even if it's just implied.
Then we move on to lame flirting. Yes, it's lame, even for Torchwood. I'm refraining from quoting. It involves tenses square dancing with the aforementioned points of view, and more OOCness for both parties involved. General disregard of canon. Me, trying to spork my own eyes out for thinking I could find good Jack/Gwen.
Which I don't even ship.
This ending gem, spoken by Gwen, just comments itself.
But you, you are dirty. In more ways than one.
*groans*