Fic for beta: that date fic wot took forever

[kayliemalinza]

Torchwood, PG (PG-13? implied sex via neck-blowing), ~emotional and relationshippy and such. Something about how communication is vital for a proper relationship? Set from KKBB to Meat.

Jack/Ianto. Like, duh. Ok like, maybe not so duh because I sekritly ship Tosh/Ianto like burning? But this is Janto. No Tosh at all. :(

Please help me in any way

Comments

[order_of_chaos]

Fic! Brilliant fic! *bounces*
Fic to poke holes in, which is harder. Hmmm.

Random commentary on fic:

Reading this straight after reading your postmodernism thing (and also when I should have been asleep) did weird things to my brain. There was fragmentation everywhere. I wasn't just being paranoid. I saw it.

Working title is bland as cardboard. I don't even remember it, and I've glanced at it at least three times. Nothing better springs to mind, except insofar as you could pick a bit of text from the fic, twist it into title-shape and it would be better. From the heart of the bagel? To throw a stapler? Context being crucial?

watching Ianto tear out a jagged bite from the heart of the bagel
That was the image that stuck with me. Loved that sentence

[kayliemalinza]

Ahaha, the fragmentation was mostly me wanting to give the effect of Jack and Ianto having deep ~emotional discussions without showing much of it, since deep ~emotional discussions are really only interesting for the people involved. D'you think that worked?
(also, also, there's allusion, and pastiche, and wonky formatting and, and emotional alienation? and, and, wait now I'm just making stuff up. ^_^)

I think you're exactly right on the working title-- it worked for when I started writing, and gave me a through line, but not only is it bland, but I've seen several other fic with the same title. Not surprising, since it's a quote. Hrm. "From the Heart of the Bagel" and "To Throw a Stapler" are both awesome titles, but for different fic, I think. >P I will probably take your advice and twists something from the text, though.

The formatting threw me off a bit at first, with some of the bits in italics stuck to the main text and some of it separate. I could see what you were doing with it - I just found it counter-intuitive. (I don't

[order_of_chaos]

fic covering the deep emotional discussion side of their relationship has almost inevitably been written already
i think it works - it's fascinating seeing the argument without seeing what they're arguing about

(also, also, there's allusion, and pastiche, and wonky formatting and, and emotional alienation? and, and, wait now I'm just making stuff up. ^_^)
i would not have hated studying this in english class. there is so much that can be read into it, intended or not.

it's tricky. the more i read it, the more i really really like the formatting. a lot

[kayliemalinza]

it's tricky. the more i read it, the more i really really like the formatting. a lot.

Yay! It would've broken my heart if you'd said that it still didn't make sense and detracted from the narrative, etc.

I bolded the scene breaks/episode quotes, and I think it works really nicely. The division did need to be stronger. And don't feel stupid-- I was making line breaks and italics do about two or three different things, and that's inherently confusing.

lack of punctuation didn't effect the clarity of it - i was just wondering if there was some meaning behind when you did and didn't use capital letters that i was missingIt was mostly another level of gauze. Um, that was a metaphor, sorry. Anyway, it's part of "hearing the argument without hearing the specifics" thinger. Reported speech (dialogue not italicized, not in quotes) is less-- tangible? real? than direct speech (the stuff in quotes.) I.e., you just need to know that Jack likes Ianto's pjs; the exact wording of it is not important (it's murky, like looking at something

[order_of_chaos]

You know, what I really want to do is copy-paste the whole fic, point to it and say that. I like that bit.

I.

Ianto wants to keep ahold of
Speaking as betaperson, I'm not sure of the ahold of.

Yay for Ianto's jolt at Jack's smile and mountains and rocks and Lisa and Jack being always right (and why) and Ianto wanting to not do this now and Jack letting him (which backed up the Jack being always right bit rather nicely, I thought).

Ianto hasn't said anything but Jack's been watching him. Jack sighs, sits on the corner of his desk and says, "Ok."
Ianto, hands on hips, looks up.
Jack smiles. "We don't have to do this tonight if you don't want to."
I loved Jack for that.

Ianto thinks he's seen that pose in management training manuals under 'non-confrontational body language.'
Brilliant. Perfectly sneaky way of describing it without directly saying he was being non-confrontational.
And I can just imagine Jack flipping through management training manuals when he's supposed to be doing paperwork and trying things out on his team.

..

[kayliemalinza]

'ahold of' and the first 'then' are gone, and 'anyway' now has a comma. Thank you!

re: Jack being right- yay! I figured-- as much as people write Jack as being aloof, or somehow emotionally fubar'd, that can't be completely right. He's hesitant to enter serious relationships, yeah, but because he knows the extent of the commitment involved. Jack has so much love for people and the universe, and I think that he's rather the perfect person to become immortal. He gets the chance to fall deeply and helplessly AND deeply and maturely in love and carry the relationship to its natural conclusion over and over again. I bet he's a fantastic husband. The fact that he still loves Estelle and wants to take care of her says a lot to me about that.

goddammit! why does this brain keep blue-screening? [ctrl+alt+del]

[badly_knitted]

This is just meltingly gorgeous. They're two such conflicting personalities, but they're also alike in some ways. Ianto avoids talking about things by not talking, Jack avoids it by talking a lot about anything else. Somehow though, they find ways to connect and to overcome their differences while accepting that they are who they are, and they're both set in their ways. But they do manage to talk about things they need to get straight between them, in a roundabout kind of way, and negotiate what is and isn't acceptable. Neither of them is perfect, but they'll make this thing between them work because they both want it to.

[kayliemalinza]

thank you! it's so nice to get a comment as thorough and lovely as this one on an older fic. if you're curious, the final/official version of this fic is here.

[badly_knitted]

Ooh, I didn't know there was an official version! Thanks for the link =)

I've been online and reading (and writing) Torchwood fanfic since the end of 2008, but there's still a huge backlog that I haven't got around to reading yet because people will insist on writing new ones. Sometimes I think I will never catch up. It's well worth the effort to track down older fics I missed though!