Fic: Abort, Retry, Fail?
Title: Abort, Retry, Fail?
Author:caledonius72
Prompt: Written for reel_torchwood round 2; The Stepford Wives (1975); based on the 1972 Ira Levin novel of the same name, directed by Bryan Forbes with a screenplay by William Goldman.
Characters: Jack Harkness, Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper.
Pairing(s): Gwen/Rhys, Jack/Ianto, implied Owen/Tosh.
Rating: NC-17, for the swearing and darkish themes, no sex but there is innuendo though.
Warnings: Bad language.
Spoilers: Set during S2, may contain spoilers for S1 and S2, and selected back-story from S3.
Disclaimer: Belongs to the producers (BBC Wales, Edgar J. Scherick, Columbia Pictures), the creators (Russell T. Davies et al, Ira Lewin, William Goldman, Bryan Forbes). This has been written for fun and not for profit.
Author's Notes: One of my favourite movies, a thriller in sunlight, great dialogue and terrifying. Paula Prentiss’ performance is mesmerizing; she steals the movie right from under everyone’s nose. This is the longest thing I’ve written (43K words), ever, in my life! It’s been hard but good fun. Constructive criticism is actively sought; I want to become a better writer. This is inspired by The Stepford Wives, rather than a retelling, and there's a much darker story based on The Stepford Wives that could be written, I've got the ideas for it, but not quite confident enough (yet!) to write it.
Beta: Profound thanks to madder_rose and fide_et_spe for the hand holding, plot pointers, and the sterling beta work - both of them are very much appreciated and have given insightful feedback. Any mistakes, errors, bad science or glaring plotholes are mine alone so just deploy a bit of handwavey to overcome them.
Summary: Rhydygrisiau is picture perfect, a model town. Torchwood know there's no such thing as perfection. Just what is going on?
Posting/Reading: It's been written as a continuous fic, rather than structured chapters so it's better to read it in one go. For LJ I've made it into six posts, each is about 10-15K words long. Your options are: LiveJournal: Part 1, Google Docs or PDF.
Comments: I've allowed for anonymous comments but please be constructive if anonymous. Abusive anonymous comments will be deleted. Please leave all comments here, so I can respond to them, especially if you read the Google Docs or PDF versions.