Fic Commentary: Swallowing the Storm
Written for the fic commentary meme. Would you like to help me procrastinate request a commentary? You may do so right here
This is the commentary for "Swallowing the Storm" which I am writing at the behest of juliet316 . I wrote this as part of writerinatardis , a Doctor/Rose last-author-standing contest. The prompt was, "The Doctor and Rose get caught in a storm." My way of approaching the prompts for most of my entries for this was to basically take each of them in the least literal way that I possibly could. Part of that was strategery (readers would be more likely to remember a fic that approached the prompt from a wildly different angle) but mostly it's just a way for me to try to narrow down the possibilities that each prompt holds. If that makes any sense.
As it turned out, though, this wound up just sort of being 42, but with Rose. That wasn't my intention, but upon reflection that is the result. Possibly due to my subconscious tapping into how incredibly hot I find the Doctor in 42, when he's fighting off the possession. Mmmmf.
writerinatardis had word limits for all entries, which was such a huge stumbling-block for me, and this fic really skirts the edges of comprehensible, because I had to cut so much out in order to meet the word limit. Join me, won't you, as we flip back and forth between tenses, POVs and settings in my brave attempt to tell kind of a complicated story in under 1200 words .
His home floats and swirls in a sea of time, and vibrates in sympathy with the music of the spheres. The song from outside the doors has always called with temptations; but now, the music has become a pulse, a drumming, a tangible feeling fluttering over his skin and clutching tightly at his chest.
He still feels the current of destruction crackling down his spine, to his fingertips. The feeling of his body moving through space seems wrong, like after a day spent at the sea, when the currents and the tide carry you forward long after the water has been left behind. His shadow cast on the coral walls is still one of the death-bringer, the colossus, the destroyer of worlds. It is no use to say that such a disaster was averted: it is always in him, and he knows it.
And now, she knows it, too.
Okay, so a weakness for Doctor-as-Secret-Badass is on full display here. It's why I loved Ten so much. His badassery was both extremely secret and extremely badass. Anyway, I am so not sold on how effective this present-tense/flashback/present-tense structure is working here. The story is confusing enough as it is. But I I think I wanted to show the consequences before showing the event that caused them, to spark a little curiosity in the reader without jumping right into the SKIENCE and PLOT.
***
"They're coming. Can't you feel it, Rose? The hairs standing up on your arm-it's them." The Doctor gritted his teeth, his hands waving wildly as he pulled at his hair and spun around on the spot. He looked constantly towards the East, never taking his eyes off of a dark cloud growing on the horizon. "Nothing can stop them now."Do you capitalise cardinal directions? I'm so shit at all the style guide stuff, and I couldn't have a beta for any of these fics because of the sooper seekrit nature of the contest and my usual betas were all competing as well.
Rose moved forward to take his arm, trying to ground herself, and him. She'd rarely, if ever, seen him in such a state, and it took effort for her to remain calm, where she could be of help. "What should we do?"
"There's nothing," the Doctor said. For a moment he was simply grim, still, and ashen pale as they stood among lifeless rocks, under the cold light of a grey sun. Then he turned, startling her and gripping her shoulders painfully with shaking hands. "You have to get away from here! Go back to the TARDIS and take her away. You can't let me in, not for anything, no matter what I say. Do you understand?"
How much do I love freaking-out!Ten? A whole, whole lot. I do wonder here whether I'm trying to keep what is actually about to happen a mystery for too long.
"Take the TARDIS... away?" She pulled away from his grip, caught his hands in hers as they fell from her shoulders. "It's not that far; we can both go. You said it could keep out Genghis Khan, yeah?"
"They're moving too fast, we wouldn't make it."
Indeed, the cloud was boiling, exploding into the sky, moving at a rate much faster than any natural phenomenon. The air was alive with electricity, and the mechanical hum of billions upon billions of nanobots grew deafening. She had to raise her voice to answer him and be heard.
"Then we're both trapped- Oh. Oh, Doctor, no." She dropped his hands, shaking her head over and over. "No, no, no," she repeated, the words just turning into a sound that she couldn't stop coming from her. "No, you can't!" She reached out to him but he moved away.
He stood back from her, withdrawing, preparing. "It's me they're after. And once I'm infected... I won't be me any more. They'll rebuild my neural pathways, connect me to their mainframe... and with the power of the TARDIS, I would destroy the universe."Is it at all clear what is going on here, and what the Doctor is planning? Basically, the TARDIS is too far for them both to make a run for it and make it, but since the nanobots are targeted on the Doctor, if he stays put, it'll buy Rose enough time.
He turned and took several steps towards the roiling, teeming cloud, bracing himself for their impact. "Oh god, Rose..." he gasped, staggering and falling to his knees. Hnnnngh. I have a problem. Seriously. Send the Whump-bulance.
The swarm hit Rose's skin like a rain of needles. She shut her eyes and crumpled to the ground, covering her head, reeling from the feeling of millions of creatures climbing over her skin, getting under her fingernails, in her hair, swirling around her limbs. Even through the roar of so many metal creatures all clashing against one another, she heard the Doctor's final screams of terror and grief.
***
We interrupt this super-intense action to spend some quiet time in the TARDIS garden. These are some seriously questionable narrative choices on my part.
He finds her in the garden, tossing stale bread into a koi pond. He's never had the heart to tell her that the fish that flit under the surface aren't real and don't need to be fed.I can never resist an opportunity to make the TARDIS even weirder.
"Doctor." She says his name with a note of surprise, perhaps having expected him to go back to his usual routine-as she would go back to hers-but it's all different now.
"What you did was-" He can't seem to find the words to finish.
"If you've come to scold me, I'm not apologising," she says, sticking her chin out slightly in defiance. "I did what I had to do, for you."
He reaches towards her, and she watches his hand approach, her lids falling as he lays his palm against her cheek. Yes, well, it was a shipfic contest, after all.
His mind files and catalogues the experience of merging with the centre of the swarm, and finding Rose there also. Terror, at the knowledge of what he would be capable of once fully changed and assimilated; thrilled and sickened by the waves of pure information flowing through him; wonder at recognising another living presence with him, catching him as he fell. He finds, though, that the simple act of naming things and placing them in their special boxes is no longer sufficient. I'm leaving a whole lot up to the reader as far as figuring out what the nanobots are, what they do, and why. It's so hard for me to tell whether there's enough information (or too much) when writing science-fictiony things because I have it all worked out in my head. I'm afraid of infodumping, but I'm also afraid of just hopelessly confusing everyone.
***
Forcing herself to stand against the storm, Rose willed the pain and the fear away by entering fully into the Doctor's cries of despair, letting everything else disintegrate around her. She opened her mouth, hungrily swallowing mouthful after mouthful, though the metal carapaces lacerated everything they touched. They had been programmed to seek and find the Doctor, the superior being among the few living things left on this lonely rock, and she prayed that, having been forced inside her own frail, human body, they'd just get on with it, regardless of who or what they were infecting.See, this right here kind of smells like infodumping to me.
Her insides boiled, and her mind raced, faster and faster until she thought she'd either explode or flare out right on the spot, like a roman candle. The microscopic robots sought out her humanity, and surrounded it for a final attack, but then she did something they'd not been programmed to anticipate: she welcomed them. She harnessed them, rode them, following them back to their source, their overmind, far away-just a frequency in the air.Using a very common RTD-era theme here, that humanity always trumps machines because of the emotion-factor. Love conquers all, blahdyblah. I'm a sucker for that. I did at least make an attempt to have it not be a direct love=victory! situation. I wanted to make it a little more complicated, so it's love=unpredictable behaviour=unforeseen opportunities + determination =victory!
The temptation to completely become one with the larger whole was overwhelming. There was no separation between herself and all other life assimilated by the swarm. I am not actually a Star Trek fan, but I have a feeling I'm probably totally cribbing from the Borg here.
Here, she could exist as one with the Doctor forever. To say that she entered his mind-or that he entered hers-would be a fallacy. There was no him and no her, just a stream of burning information spreading out in all directions.
And yet, she fought. Perhaps it was the newly received memory of being the one to send an entire timeline into oblivion, along with the screaming multitudes that moved along it. It must not happen again, and certainly not twice to the same man.This is where I am pretty sure I lost people through vagueness. Rose is experiencing memories of the Time War because she and the Doctor are connected through the nanobot assimilation.
The same man.
She found him, separated herself from the hive-mind buzzing in her head, and wrenched him free as well. Which was apparently either really easy or really uninteresting because I skip over that bit entirely. Ah, well. Word limit.
***
She has seen what is in his mind, and he wishes he could take that away again. Having now been in her mind as well, he knows that if he did, she would never forgive him.
"It's madness, this," he says, folding her into a tight embrace, bending down to place his forehead against hers. "I could have killed us all."
"No one who loves you would ever let that happen," she says, with such certainty.
He wants so badly to believe her.This is one of those "what does that even mean?" lines. Or really, series of lines. It sounds nice. There's a legitimate sentiment in there somewhere, I think. But I got wrapped up in schmoopy dialogue and Aphorisms That Sound Impressive But Don't Mean Anything. I hate it when I do that.
All in all, I do like this fic, but it seriously needed to be twice as long, I think.
This is the commentary for "Swallowing the Storm" which I am writing at the behest of juliet316 . I wrote this as part of writerinatardis , a Doctor/Rose last-author-standing contest. The prompt was, "The Doctor and Rose get caught in a storm." My way of approaching the prompts for most of my entries for this was to basically take each of them in the least literal way that I possibly could. Part of that was strategery (readers would be more likely to remember a fic that approached the prompt from a wildly different angle) but mostly it's just a way for me to try to narrow down the possibilities that each prompt holds. If that makes any sense.
As it turned out, though, this wound up just sort of being 42, but with Rose. That wasn't my intention, but upon reflection that is the result. Possibly due to my subconscious tapping into how incredibly hot I find the Doctor in 42, when he's fighting off the possession. Mmmmf.
writerinatardis had word limits for all entries, which was such a huge stumbling-block for me, and this fic really skirts the edges of comprehensible, because I had to cut so much out in order to meet the word limit. Join me, won't you, as we flip back and forth between tenses, POVs and settings in my brave attempt to tell kind of a complicated story in under 1200 words .
His home floats and swirls in a sea of time, and vibrates in sympathy with the music of the spheres. The song from outside the doors has always called with temptations; but now, the music has become a pulse, a drumming, a tangible feeling fluttering over his skin and clutching tightly at his chest.
He still feels the current of destruction crackling down his spine, to his fingertips. The feeling of his body moving through space seems wrong, like after a day spent at the sea, when the currents and the tide carry you forward long after the water has been left behind. His shadow cast on the coral walls is still one of the death-bringer, the colossus, the destroyer of worlds. It is no use to say that such a disaster was averted: it is always in him, and he knows it.
And now, she knows it, too.
Okay, so a weakness for Doctor-as-Secret-Badass is on full display here. It's why I loved Ten so much. His badassery was both extremely secret and extremely badass. Anyway, I am so not sold on how effective this present-tense/flashback/present-tense structure is working here. The story is confusing enough as it is. But I I think I wanted to show the consequences before showing the event that caused them, to spark a little curiosity in the reader without jumping right into the SKIENCE and PLOT.
***
"They're coming. Can't you feel it, Rose? The hairs standing up on your arm-it's them." The Doctor gritted his teeth, his hands waving wildly as he pulled at his hair and spun around on the spot. He looked constantly towards the East, never taking his eyes off of a dark cloud growing on the horizon. "Nothing can stop them now."Do you capitalise cardinal directions? I'm so shit at all the style guide stuff, and I couldn't have a beta for any of these fics because of the sooper seekrit nature of the contest and my usual betas were all competing as well.
Rose moved forward to take his arm, trying to ground herself, and him. She'd rarely, if ever, seen him in such a state, and it took effort for her to remain calm, where she could be of help. "What should we do?"
"There's nothing," the Doctor said. For a moment he was simply grim, still, and ashen pale as they stood among lifeless rocks, under the cold light of a grey sun. Then he turned, startling her and gripping her shoulders painfully with shaking hands. "You have to get away from here! Go back to the TARDIS and take her away. You can't let me in, not for anything, no matter what I say. Do you understand?"
How much do I love freaking-out!Ten? A whole, whole lot. I do wonder here whether I'm trying to keep what is actually about to happen a mystery for too long.
"Take the TARDIS... away?" She pulled away from his grip, caught his hands in hers as they fell from her shoulders. "It's not that far; we can both go. You said it could keep out Genghis Khan, yeah?"
"They're moving too fast, we wouldn't make it."
Indeed, the cloud was boiling, exploding into the sky, moving at a rate much faster than any natural phenomenon. The air was alive with electricity, and the mechanical hum of billions upon billions of nanobots grew deafening. She had to raise her voice to answer him and be heard.
"Then we're both trapped- Oh. Oh, Doctor, no." She dropped his hands, shaking her head over and over. "No, no, no," she repeated, the words just turning into a sound that she couldn't stop coming from her. "No, you can't!" She reached out to him but he moved away.
He stood back from her, withdrawing, preparing. "It's me they're after. And once I'm infected... I won't be me any more. They'll rebuild my neural pathways, connect me to their mainframe... and with the power of the TARDIS, I would destroy the universe."Is it at all clear what is going on here, and what the Doctor is planning? Basically, the TARDIS is too far for them both to make a run for it and make it, but since the nanobots are targeted on the Doctor, if he stays put, it'll buy Rose enough time.
He turned and took several steps towards the roiling, teeming cloud, bracing himself for their impact. "Oh god, Rose..." he gasped, staggering and falling to his knees. Hnnnngh. I have a problem. Seriously. Send the Whump-bulance.
The swarm hit Rose's skin like a rain of needles. She shut her eyes and crumpled to the ground, covering her head, reeling from the feeling of millions of creatures climbing over her skin, getting under her fingernails, in her hair, swirling around her limbs. Even through the roar of so many metal creatures all clashing against one another, she heard the Doctor's final screams of terror and grief.
***
We interrupt this super-intense action to spend some quiet time in the TARDIS garden. These are some seriously questionable narrative choices on my part.
He finds her in the garden, tossing stale bread into a koi pond. He's never had the heart to tell her that the fish that flit under the surface aren't real and don't need to be fed.I can never resist an opportunity to make the TARDIS even weirder.
"Doctor." She says his name with a note of surprise, perhaps having expected him to go back to his usual routine-as she would go back to hers-but it's all different now.
"What you did was-" He can't seem to find the words to finish.
"If you've come to scold me, I'm not apologising," she says, sticking her chin out slightly in defiance. "I did what I had to do, for you."
He reaches towards her, and she watches his hand approach, her lids falling as he lays his palm against her cheek. Yes, well, it was a shipfic contest, after all.
His mind files and catalogues the experience of merging with the centre of the swarm, and finding Rose there also. Terror, at the knowledge of what he would be capable of once fully changed and assimilated; thrilled and sickened by the waves of pure information flowing through him; wonder at recognising another living presence with him, catching him as he fell. He finds, though, that the simple act of naming things and placing them in their special boxes is no longer sufficient. I'm leaving a whole lot up to the reader as far as figuring out what the nanobots are, what they do, and why. It's so hard for me to tell whether there's enough information (or too much) when writing science-fictiony things because I have it all worked out in my head. I'm afraid of infodumping, but I'm also afraid of just hopelessly confusing everyone.
***
Forcing herself to stand against the storm, Rose willed the pain and the fear away by entering fully into the Doctor's cries of despair, letting everything else disintegrate around her. She opened her mouth, hungrily swallowing mouthful after mouthful, though the metal carapaces lacerated everything they touched. They had been programmed to seek and find the Doctor, the superior being among the few living things left on this lonely rock, and she prayed that, having been forced inside her own frail, human body, they'd just get on with it, regardless of who or what they were infecting.See, this right here kind of smells like infodumping to me.
Her insides boiled, and her mind raced, faster and faster until she thought she'd either explode or flare out right on the spot, like a roman candle. The microscopic robots sought out her humanity, and surrounded it for a final attack, but then she did something they'd not been programmed to anticipate: she welcomed them. She harnessed them, rode them, following them back to their source, their overmind, far away-just a frequency in the air.Using a very common RTD-era theme here, that humanity always trumps machines because of the emotion-factor. Love conquers all, blahdyblah. I'm a sucker for that. I did at least make an attempt to have it not be a direct love=victory! situation. I wanted to make it a little more complicated, so it's love=unpredictable behaviour=unforeseen opportunities + determination =victory!
The temptation to completely become one with the larger whole was overwhelming. There was no separation between herself and all other life assimilated by the swarm. I am not actually a Star Trek fan, but I have a feeling I'm probably totally cribbing from the Borg here.
Here, she could exist as one with the Doctor forever. To say that she entered his mind-or that he entered hers-would be a fallacy. There was no him and no her, just a stream of burning information spreading out in all directions.
And yet, she fought. Perhaps it was the newly received memory of being the one to send an entire timeline into oblivion, along with the screaming multitudes that moved along it. It must not happen again, and certainly not twice to the same man.This is where I am pretty sure I lost people through vagueness. Rose is experiencing memories of the Time War because she and the Doctor are connected through the nanobot assimilation.
The same man.
She found him, separated herself from the hive-mind buzzing in her head, and wrenched him free as well. Which was apparently either really easy or really uninteresting because I skip over that bit entirely. Ah, well. Word limit.
***
She has seen what is in his mind, and he wishes he could take that away again. Having now been in her mind as well, he knows that if he did, she would never forgive him.
"It's madness, this," he says, folding her into a tight embrace, bending down to place his forehead against hers. "I could have killed us all."
"No one who loves you would ever let that happen," she says, with such certainty.
He wants so badly to believe her.This is one of those "what does that even mean?" lines. Or really, series of lines. It sounds nice. There's a legitimate sentiment in there somewhere, I think. But I got wrapped up in schmoopy dialogue and Aphorisms That Sound Impressive But Don't Mean Anything. I hate it when I do that.
All in all, I do like this fic, but it seriously needed to be twice as long, I think.