extraneous thoughts + ficlet
all of this in reference to my Inception Doctor Who AU fic! here it is: Life in the Middle, Right Between the Edges
I’ve just been poking and prodding along, trying to write the last 300 words of it for like a solid week. I threw up my hands tonight (they were playing my song?) and told myself to just write something and post it. Anyway, here are some thinky-thoughts that get more fic specific as they go along, plus something fun at the end:
And if you’ve gotten through all my stupid rambling (or if you were clever and just scrolled down) here’s a reward in the form of an aside that I could probably never put in a full length fic:
Arthur Meets River Song
“What is she, your ex?”
“Please, do you think it would be something that simple, darling?” The Doctor keeps tinkering with the machine. He distinctly remembers a similar conversation from a time when he knew significantly less about his relationship with Professor River Song and she knew significantly more. He makes a mental note to never introduce Arthur to Amy Pond. They would have a field day with him.
River smiles at Arthur. The Doctor recognizes this smile and prepares for the worst. “Oh, has he never told you about Queen Elizabeth, either? What was that adorable pet name you had for her, Doctor? The not-so-virgin queen?”
The Doctor fiddles with wires helplessly. He connects a blue to a green and a red to an orange and pulls a yellow wire across all of them and then disconnects them all when he realizes he’s just created a bomb.
“No, I don’t think he’s ever mentioned her to me. In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever even been to the sixteenth century.” The Doctor can tell without looking that Arthur is doing that thing where his entire face is a frown.
River’s smile gets impossibly wider. “Arthur. We’re going to have so much fun together.”
FUN FACT: When River Song said she learned to fly the TARDIS from “the very best,” she meant Arthur. :D
I’ve just been poking and prodding along, trying to write the last 300 words of it for like a solid week. I threw up my hands tonight (they were playing my song?) and told myself to just write something and post it. Anyway, here are some thinky-thoughts that get more fic specific as they go along, plus something fun at the end:
- I can’t write Inception serious-fic for the life of me. I mean, never say never, but I just can’t get my head in those spaces. I think the canon is just too small for me. I guess I’m overcautious? I need some prolonged exposure to characters and concepts before I can shake out my own interpretations of them properly. Writing AU lets me write characters and neatly slot them into a different canon/history so I don’t have to be terribly accurate about everything. It gives me a certain amount of flexibility and wiggle room.
- Corollary to that… I can understand the Doctor much better than I can understand Eames, since I’ve had five series of the Doctor (and under three different guises, which I think is possibly more valuable since I can see what changes and what doesn’t) versus a few scenes with Eames. I can understand an Eames-Doctor fusion because I can let traits and histories bounce off one another and form a clearer picture that way. Some sort of echolocation effect. (Also, the Doctor lives in a vastly different headspace than Eames, since he is much older and has seen so much more. Half the fun is seeing how Eames could take on/fit into the Doctor’s headspace. In a way, the Doctor is the ultimate manifestation of Eames-he literally changes his face.)
- I get wiggle room on Inception characterization, but at the same time I get free range to play in the Doctor’s universe. (Uh, duh.) I think there’s always so much pressure to the Doctor right. He has to be the right amount of clever and manic and wizened. If I call it Inception fic masquerading as Doctor Who, people come in with a very different mindset. I still have to maintain a standard, sure, but I think my margin of error is that much better.
- The title is probably my favorite thing about the fic. I wanted to get a sense of life on the TARDIS between crazy capers. There’s a whole world right inside that blue box, and we never get to see it. They must spend a couple days doing boring things like eating sandwiches and organizing libraries. The Doctor always seems like he’s teetering on the edge of one thing or another, but this is that space in the Middle, where it’s safe. I inserted a lot of little details and side-stories to try to give it a little scope without having the thing drag out for days. (Although, I would love just writing like… A Weekend In the TARDIS. They argue over waffles versus… a proper Time Lord brunch. None of them change out of their pajamas all day. The companions spend an hour looking through all the Doctor’s crazy stuff while he shouts at them to just put it down ineffectually.)
- I don’t actually have backstories worked out (or much of anything really), but I feel like I could. There are so many stories to be had from this. I feel like I fleshed out Ariadne and Arthur a hair more than Yusuf, but it’s really hard giving everyone equal screen time. I had anxiety over this, because I love Yusuf just as much, but it was just getting clumsy to put in all those asides. Also, possibly it’s because of the lack of exposure thing as rambled about above. If it’s any consolation (I don’t know why this would be, but ok), Yusuf was the first companion and they’ve been picking up these strays ever since. Also, I just made this up but it sounds about right so: the Doctor was fresh off a regeneration and found Yusuf and was like “OMG, you’re a chemist? Mix these crazy things together and let me drink it! I need to save the world!” and Yusuf was like, “WTF? That would kill you. No.” And the Doctor was like “Ugh, just do it, be a bro. Also there’s this big doom coming for you right now!” So Yusuf did it and it was the start of a beautiful relationship.
And if you’ve gotten through all my stupid rambling (or if you were clever and just scrolled down) here’s a reward in the form of an aside that I could probably never put in a full length fic:
Arthur Meets River Song
“What is she, your ex?”
“Please, do you think it would be something that simple, darling?” The Doctor keeps tinkering with the machine. He distinctly remembers a similar conversation from a time when he knew significantly less about his relationship with Professor River Song and she knew significantly more. He makes a mental note to never introduce Arthur to Amy Pond. They would have a field day with him.
River smiles at Arthur. The Doctor recognizes this smile and prepares for the worst. “Oh, has he never told you about Queen Elizabeth, either? What was that adorable pet name you had for her, Doctor? The not-so-virgin queen?”
The Doctor fiddles with wires helplessly. He connects a blue to a green and a red to an orange and pulls a yellow wire across all of them and then disconnects them all when he realizes he’s just created a bomb.
“No, I don’t think he’s ever mentioned her to me. In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever even been to the sixteenth century.” The Doctor can tell without looking that Arthur is doing that thing where his entire face is a frown.
River’s smile gets impossibly wider. “Arthur. We’re going to have so much fun together.”
FUN FACT: When River Song said she learned to fly the TARDIS from “the very best,” she meant Arthur. :D