A Ticket Home (fic)

[meilin_miranda]

Cross-posted at Teaspoon

Title: A Ticket Home
Author: MeiLin
Rating: R
Characters: Jack Harkness, Shae Han/Miss Dexter (original character), Francine Jones, The Master
Pairings: Master/Shae
Disclaimer: The Beeb owns everyone in here, and a good chunk of me too, apparently. Except Shae! I own Shae! OK I partly own her!

Summary: The

Comments

[eumenidis]

Oh, please don't allow yourself to be demoralized, mi amica. We are all our own harshest critics, which is as it should be I suppose, but be aware of your own strengths. You write clear, precise prose, realistic characters & situations, & you have a clear, unsentimental understanding of the dynamics of the characters & their situations. There are many *professional* novelists who don't write anything approaching as well as you.

Speaking of characterization: Shae working for the Master--talk about self-defeating! Her arrogance & stubbornness (& perhaps some shame?) are certainly combining to hoist her high. Thinking of what's going to happen to her doesn't just make my skin crawl, it gets up & walks...

[meilin_miranda]

thank you. I just finished reading S.M. Stirling's "Dies the Fire" books and I now know what you mean. ;) My ultimate goal is to write my own universe. I'm just not ready yet, and this keeps me out of trouble until then. I don't know why it was Doctor Who of all things that broke all this out of me, but it did.

Shae STILL doesn't know exactly what she's dealing with here. And you can't spell "shame" without "Shae." ;) Does she get a shot a redemption? Or no? She hasn't told me yet.

[eumenidis]

Do you mean the "Dies the Fire" series is a bad or good example? Anyway, I think that working within someone else's universe is good for discipline, developing research skills, thinking through the implications & believeability of characters & situations, getting a sense of what's necessary for creating a "universe", & every other aspect of writing fiction. That's the major reason that, except in very exceptional cases, I *LOATHE* AU fic, it's usually written because the writer/s are too lazy, careless, untalented to come up with a story within canon.

No, but she knows she's put her foot in it. Up to the chest. If she didn't have Homerically huge (paraphrasing Joss) pride & stubbornness blocking her view she'd probably realize she'd be better off crawling back to TW3 & being locked up than continuing to hang with a psychopathic alien sadist. But she is Homerically proud & stubborn...come to think of it, those were some of Achilles' faults, too...

[meilin_miranda]

Hence the Homer

[eumenidis]

Joss' X-Men V. 3 is out? Needs must hie me to Lone Star Comics... Needs must also acquire collected Buffy S8 while I'm there. I got sidetracked because after years of resisting, last May I finally broke down & got internet--which was an adventure as there are no land lines in this part of my town & salespeople know bugger all about customers' technical needs

[meilin_miranda]

I could be wrong about Stirling, but I don't think I am. snorfle. But! I read all three books, so the guy obviously hooked me in. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the apocalypse, and if it's a little on the cartoony side, it's better. Because I suspend disbelief really easily

[eumenidis]

To tell the truth, I often read for ideas more than for characters. There wasn't much in the way of an intellectual life in my family, so I found it in SF. And face it, since so much of the SF I read growing up was written by engineers & physical scientists, the characters generally had rather less depth than Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck

[meilin_miranda]

Nope, she nailed him clean and she knew it. No chance in her mind he could have survived it, but even if he beat incredible odds there would have been months if not years of therapy in her time let alone ours. That's my story, anyway, and I'm stickin' to it. :)

[eumenidis]

OK. Now the question arises: if she knows she nailed 'im good & proper, how does she account for his walking around again nursing a grudge?

[meilin_miranda]

She can't! It ain't natcherl! She's a spooked spook! So she chooses to deal with it by ignoring it and staying away from Jack. Cognitive dissonance, don't you know.

[eumenidis]

& extra incentive to put up with the Master's kinky hijinks.

Poor Shae, she has so screwed herself, & not in a good way.

[meilin_miranda]

Actually I don't think the Master's really going to be doing much of that. From time to time he'll enjoy terrorizing someone, like Lucy, or Shae, or Tish (in my very first story), or whoever else happens to be handy--but it's not a focal point for him. He's bored, it's something to do. The guy's hyper plus also evil. I imagine Jack gets it at some point, probably several points, and I can even imagine him doing it to ancient!Doctor at least once, just for the humiliation factor.

That said, this particular incident was not because of boredom. He saw the game Shae was trying to play and decided it was time to get it over with and show her who was boss. As with keeping up the illusion he was faithful to Lucy (though she very well knew he was not), he let Shae have her illusion that she was in control until it wasn't necessary any more. He'll probably leave her alone most of the time, unless she's around, needs putting in her place, and he's bored, in which case all bets are off.

[eumenidis]

I dunno, I remember the Master from Three's time used the Queen of Atlantis' sexual interest in him as a means to further his ends, so somewhere he acquired technique. The Simm Master gave Tish the once-over when he met her, the reporter the Toclafane killed remarked that he "does like a pretty face," & even after Lucy was pretty completely shattered, he still liked having her around to play with. Probably sexuality is just another tool/weapon. Hm. I've basically just agreed with you.

[meilin_miranda]

win! ;)

I'm not saying he doesn't have the moves. You get to be a few hundred years old, you're bound to acquire some just hanging around! And I'm not saying he doesn't enjoy himself; to the contrary, he loves it. It's just not what drives him.

Sex for him is something fun to do among lots of other fun things to do, like burning a city, or dropping musicians off the hangar deck, unless it serves other purposes as well. He can even do it sweetly if need be, as we'll see in a Lucy story I'm writing.

(Me with the sex again! jeebus!)

But. As with the Doctor, essentially the Master is unknowable. They're not human, and they do things for reasons we can't entirely comprehend.

It's why I choose never to write from either the Doctor's or the Master's perspectives. If I ever write "the Doctor thought..." I'll be very surprised.

[eumenidis]

Excuse me for being difficult; brain is rusty. I used to write reviews for the club newsletter & the occasional fic, but I haven't done that in...oh, my God, has it been *that* long? Hopefully, hanging out with fellow fen will clean the cogs & get them moving again soon. Esp. since I've been converted to NewWho, I may have finally found the perfect vehicle for the story where someone goes back in time & kicks Sigmund Freud's misogynist ass that I've been talking about for, oh, ever

[meilin_miranda]

Oh, you're not being difficult at all! These kinds of conversations help me figure stuff out. I've had a productive writing day, even though I haven't had much time to write. I know it looks like I'm always here, but I'm not