Show and Tell
So the weekend before last unfeathered asked me to beta Lessons Learned for her. I'd already seen the very first rough draft as she'd been kind enough to share when we were ironing out her Jack voice for the Rose thing. And I leapt at the chance because I'd seen how much potential it had. So anyway I got to the end of my first read through and mentally flipped over the page - found it blank - and mailed her back and said "So when can we expect the next bit??" and she replied - quite casually I thought ;-) - "Oh there isn't one, it's a one off."
I beg your pardon it's what??
You leave it there (we all know where she'd left it, right? ) at that *teaser* of an ending - and well if that wasn't designed to be an introduction I don't know what was and we don't get any more!?
So there I was throwing beta type remarks back to her on the Sunday and *at the same time* Jack was already getting busy.
Oh yeah Jack - because it was his point of view back then - he was the one with something to prove after all - and he was like- Well he was doing pretty much what he's doing in the final version really only he was talking *a lot* I mean really irritatingly so and the Doctor so didn't want to listen because he's not John Sheppard and Jack is no Rodney and though the Doctor really likes the sound of Jack's voice I could hear him yelling at Jack to shut up and get the fuck on with it before long. But that was my fault because I'd allowed myself to pick up where unfeathered left off- with the conversation. Despite the fact that *immediately* after the Doctor had laid down his challenge Jack had just lain out on top of the covers beside him and had a damn good think about what he was going to have to do to impress the still fully clothed - the Doctor's even still got his boots on - talk about armour - man laying next to him. Which threw the Doctor no end I can tell you. Comfortable he was not!
I mean I held off as long as I could but by 12:30pm I was writing her an email - I swear there was actual pleading - or at least the threat of me begging (so not a pretty sight at lunchtime) - asking if I could pick up where she'd left off. And I think the next 45 minutes waiting for her reply rank right up there with childbirth on the seeming to last forever league table ;-)
Then Lessons went live and the discussions began and unfeathered posted this where she sounded pretty miserable that it wasn't hot. And you know I hadn't even thought to comment that it was or wasn't (though she did get a GUH out of me in beta at one point) simply because it hadn't occurred to me that it was supposed to be - not for us as readers anyway. I mean yeah Jack was obviously having a 'wail' of a time toward the end there but it was the Doctor's rationale that was driving it and he wasn't coming at it from a sexual angle at all. Sex for him was just a tool with Jack. Let's face it sex is always going to be a double edged sword for our Captain - he's perfectly capable of using it - or at least the promise of it - to his own ends BUT at the same time he's a slave (and I use the word here with caution) to it. Not that he's some adolescent who keeps his brain in his trousers. He's Not. But given the right set of circumstances - like those in Lessons where he's been seduced out of the TARDIS - not by some random stranger but by someone he thought he could trust due to whatever relationship it was he's had with her in the past - it's pretty much a foregone conclusion what Jack's reaction is going to be. We know it, the Doctor knows it, hell Jack knows it too but when he steps back and looks at the odds - sex has got him out of more scrapes than it's gotten him into so he's just going to keep on taking that chance!
But I'm moving away from the point.
And I'd post actual extracts but when I changed the point of view I think I rather stupidly just saved over the top of it because I cannot find it anywhere!!
At the beginning they're spawled out on the bed and Jack's not touching the Doctor's crotch even then - he's just got his chin on his hand, staring at the Doctor like he's trying to read his thoughts and he comes out with this:
"So what turns you on Doctor?"
And the Doctor just stares right back at him and raises an eyebrow and makes this noise - the one that says 'yeah right like I'm going to help you with this one!'
And *that's* when Jack touches him - reaches out and starts stroking him, real slow, through all those layers and starts debating out loud and his very first observation is this:
"I've seen guys - women too - standing clear on the other side of the room - come from the visual *alone* of what you've just done to me - but you? Sure you're hard but not because of what you were doing... " Pause while he climbs into the Doctor's lap "... okay so you were genuinely mad at me that's going to make a difference I get that. *goes to check the Doctor's stash* *has light bulb moment* "or maybe it's because you know what it feels like..."
I actually sent unfeathered an email at this point that said: Oh and er - it seems some of Jack's interpretations of what just happened are different to mine - I didn't even *know* that could happen!!
At which point the Doctor got really shifty and didn't want to play anymore...
I had to go do real life type stuff anyway so I wasn't too thrown I thought I'd just come back to it later and maybe bop him on the head to get his attention or offer him something else really tasty in the way of a bribe and he'd open right up.
FAT CHANCE!
Sunday evening finds me hopping around unfeathered's lj and spotting random things that all point to one thing for me and that is that what Jack's thinking is right - not just because the Doctor really hadn't got anywhere near as hard as he could have in the circumstances but because Jack's seen inside the Doctor's drawer and I haven't *G*.
I also spot Time to Change and make what possibly seems the oddest of comments on the history of creation but I think was actually just the Doctor getting *really* excited at the prospect of Jack not taking his wristband off again right away or ever actually - it's not like he'll need him to again after all - he's made his point. He also takes the opportunity to poke me - rather sharply I might add - and remind me that he used the f word back there and expects Jack not to be stupid enough not to pick up on it even if I am. There's gratitude for you...
Monday morning finds me shredding my original draft and changing the point of view. This seems to make the Doctor *inordinately* happy.
In fact it keeps him very happy for another couple of hundred words at which point everything grinds to a halt
I can do nothing on Tuesday morning at all - my husband is prowling around the house bored and so is one of my sons - so I get stuck into bringing itsarift_thing up to date and by midnight my eyes feel like I imagine a pickled onion might and my fingers are numb but it is DONE godammit! And fandom_me offers me caffeine and word processors and chocolate and donutsweeper offers me donuts (what else?) which I cannot eat as I don't really deserve them. Tuesday is also the day unfeathered posts Day After - but more on that later...
Wednesday:
Jack assures me he's more than happy to keep ploughing on *he had his tongue in his cheek when he said it I swear* if I am and I tell him that if the Doctor doesn't start co-operating soon I'm going to do *something drastic* (I don't actually know what and unfortunately both Jack and the Doctor know it!).
Somewhere in the course of the evening I come across a thread - if anyone recognises it? I'll be grateful for the link. (I'm assuming it's attached to something becky_writing wrote) - that runs along the lines of Yeah Jack's definitely the sub in that relationship but we'd really like to see him *not*. It's not a new conversation I know but it does make me pluck up enough courage to, apologising for interrupting her NaNo writing, ask becky_h to run an eye overwhat I've got hoping and dreading she might say it's lousy.
Hoping because if it *is* I can legitimately throw in the towel; apologise to unfeathered for getting her hopes up and offer her some entirely different piece of porn instead.
Dreading because hey I'm a writer and I don't actually want to hear that EVER
What I actually get 2:30am Wednesday morning is I hope she doesn't mind me picking my own quotes here was: "it's hot and good and awesome." but "you've got lots and lots of passive voice" It was probably just because of the time that that passive voice comment *really* amused me. Then I went to bed totally not noticing that the copy she had sent me back didn't actually have an extension on it...
Later that same morning:
The beta copy has opened perfectly well (I still haven't noticed) and I'm working on killing every passive voice except the Doctor's - I am not at home - I am away from internet access (hell I'm in a house that doesn't even have a DVD recorder) I have saved the beta copy in 2 different formats to be on the safe side - there was that whole thing with _medley_ last week where we both ended up with tartan text after all AND it's this I think that proves my downfall.
One Mystery solved
I'm used to working in .doc and nothing else so I don't really notice when I swap from looking at the draft I've tweaked to the one I *haven't* to see which one I prefer - I do this ALL the time. I don't notice till I've hit copy and paste and then hit reload and I've suddenly got 45 pages of writing - one line on every page - some pages entirely blank; some pages looking familiarly tartan!
I spend nearly an hour screen capturing into PaintShopPro and rotating before giving up and deciding to do my errands then go home and download it again. I don't know why - other than that it's a nice residential neighbourhood - that while I'm sitting outside the Post Office I flip Sally the laptop open in the car and find I've got 3 unsecured networks within range. Of course after that driving a few hundred feet down the road to get a better signal was surely the only way to go - it was just one file right??
I do jobs. I do NOT go home. I go back to standing in parent's kitchen tweaking and getting nowhere.
When I do finally go home I sit down in front of laptop and after sitting doing nothing but stare at the page for a few hours - and doing some RL stuff - I FINALLY realise that it is all my own STUPID FAULT so I send a mail off to Becky bemoaning the fact that: "Nine *doesn't* actually want to come - he just wants to stand there in freefall for EVER" Which - thankfully - she gets.
Which is why late Thursday night I'm tapping discretely on the door and telling Jack that if he can't get the Doctor to start co-operating soon I'm going to write him - the Doctor - having sex with Owen...
Jack points out, logically enough, that he doesn't know Owen yet and the Doctor's hardly likely to run into him so that's water off a duck's back (but I don't think those were his exact words) and I retire from the room slamming the door on the way out. I am a big fan of the slammy door - it is very satisfying - and stomp off to post and donutsweeper feeds me middle of the night donuts, again, which I eat this time. I feel sick afterwards but that's more because I have to face the Doctor again and he's not going to like it.
It's now Friday and this drabble of donutsweeper's cheers me up no end but I'm still unable to face the Doctor I go and do something completely different instead - first I icon with some success and then, because it is after all Friday and I have a tw100 drabble due that evening that I haven't even thought about, I go write something as far from Nine as possible which is how I end the day with two drabbles and the beginnings of a - very loose - Jack, Martha 'verse.
Saturday sees me struggling with changing everything since I let the Doctor go drifting off - so he's not the most telepathic of the Doctors but he's still, as he's proved, more than a match for this stupid ape. Honestly I should have known - he has enough mental energy to hold the strings of everything that has, can, and ever might be in his head and still crack jokes. Staying in *that place* as long as he likes without letting me in on what was actually going on in his head wasn't going to prove hard now was it? He's a tricky bastard!
I cannot just lop him off at the knees so I do the next best thing and open a new text document and make him fast forward to the point of orgasm straight after Jack's *ahem* entry by rewriting everything after "Jack's breath rasps loud in his ear as the Captain thrusts inside him - rolling his hips in one long fluid motion." from scratch. And then send just that snippet to Becky so he doesn't know what I've done!
After all the problems I'd had I hadn't actually thought much past the orgasm but somehow ending it there and leaving everyone to assume Jack had just grabbed his clothes and 'hauled his ass out of there' didn't seem right OR very Jack like - granted they're nether of them cuddlers or twiners but Jack would *so* have spent at least some of that night in the Doctor's bed. And since unfeathered had - long before then - surprised the heck out of both of us and written Day After for lt_kitty who requested it when she ran the Time Stamp meme. There was just no way I could leave them not on the same level of understanding as unfeathered had left them herself... But they turned up for breakfast separately and done it from their own rooms or Rose would have noticed - she was in that kind of mood... So obviously in the middle of the night Jack snuck out or tried to and got caught. Cue my last tiny problem: How dark does it get in the Doctor's room at night? There's no windows... Anyone honestly believe the Doctor sleeps with a night light? No. I thought not *g*
You know Jack never did find that other boot - he got so intent on making his exit mean something he did indeed end up walking back to his room barefoot - the Doctor had to drop it into him later on the next day. But that's a different story.
I beg your pardon it's what??
You leave it there (we all know where she'd left it, right? ) at that *teaser* of an ending - and well if that wasn't designed to be an introduction I don't know what was and we don't get any more!?
So there I was throwing beta type remarks back to her on the Sunday and *at the same time* Jack was already getting busy.
Oh yeah Jack - because it was his point of view back then - he was the one with something to prove after all - and he was like- Well he was doing pretty much what he's doing in the final version really only he was talking *a lot* I mean really irritatingly so and the Doctor so didn't want to listen because he's not John Sheppard and Jack is no Rodney and though the Doctor really likes the sound of Jack's voice I could hear him yelling at Jack to shut up and get the fuck on with it before long. But that was my fault because I'd allowed myself to pick up where unfeathered left off- with the conversation. Despite the fact that *immediately* after the Doctor had laid down his challenge Jack had just lain out on top of the covers beside him and had a damn good think about what he was going to have to do to impress the still fully clothed - the Doctor's even still got his boots on - talk about armour - man laying next to him. Which threw the Doctor no end I can tell you. Comfortable he was not!
I mean I held off as long as I could but by 12:30pm I was writing her an email - I swear there was actual pleading - or at least the threat of me begging (so not a pretty sight at lunchtime) - asking if I could pick up where she'd left off. And I think the next 45 minutes waiting for her reply rank right up there with childbirth on the seeming to last forever league table ;-)
Then Lessons went live and the discussions began and unfeathered posted this where she sounded pretty miserable that it wasn't hot. And you know I hadn't even thought to comment that it was or wasn't (though she did get a GUH out of me in beta at one point) simply because it hadn't occurred to me that it was supposed to be - not for us as readers anyway. I mean yeah Jack was obviously having a 'wail' of a time toward the end there but it was the Doctor's rationale that was driving it and he wasn't coming at it from a sexual angle at all. Sex for him was just a tool with Jack. Let's face it sex is always going to be a double edged sword for our Captain - he's perfectly capable of using it - or at least the promise of it - to his own ends BUT at the same time he's a slave (and I use the word here with caution) to it. Not that he's some adolescent who keeps his brain in his trousers. He's Not. But given the right set of circumstances - like those in Lessons where he's been seduced out of the TARDIS - not by some random stranger but by someone he thought he could trust due to whatever relationship it was he's had with her in the past - it's pretty much a foregone conclusion what Jack's reaction is going to be. We know it, the Doctor knows it, hell Jack knows it too but when he steps back and looks at the odds - sex has got him out of more scrapes than it's gotten him into so he's just going to keep on taking that chance!
But I'm moving away from the point.
And I'd post actual extracts but when I changed the point of view I think I rather stupidly just saved over the top of it because I cannot find it anywhere!!
At the beginning they're spawled out on the bed and Jack's not touching the Doctor's crotch even then - he's just got his chin on his hand, staring at the Doctor like he's trying to read his thoughts and he comes out with this:
"So what turns you on Doctor?"
And the Doctor just stares right back at him and raises an eyebrow and makes this noise - the one that says 'yeah right like I'm going to help you with this one!'
And *that's* when Jack touches him - reaches out and starts stroking him, real slow, through all those layers and starts debating out loud and his very first observation is this:
"I've seen guys - women too - standing clear on the other side of the room - come from the visual *alone* of what you've just done to me - but you? Sure you're hard but not because of what you were doing... " Pause while he climbs into the Doctor's lap "... okay so you were genuinely mad at me that's going to make a difference I get that. *goes to check the Doctor's stash* *has light bulb moment* "or maybe it's because you know what it feels like..."
I actually sent unfeathered an email at this point that said: Oh and er - it seems some of Jack's interpretations of what just happened are different to mine - I didn't even *know* that could happen!!
At which point the Doctor got really shifty and didn't want to play anymore...
I had to go do real life type stuff anyway so I wasn't too thrown I thought I'd just come back to it later and maybe bop him on the head to get his attention or offer him something else really tasty in the way of a bribe and he'd open right up.
FAT CHANCE!
Sunday evening finds me hopping around unfeathered's lj and spotting random things that all point to one thing for me and that is that what Jack's thinking is right - not just because the Doctor really hadn't got anywhere near as hard as he could have in the circumstances but because Jack's seen inside the Doctor's drawer and I haven't *G*.
I also spot Time to Change and make what possibly seems the oddest of comments on the history of creation but I think was actually just the Doctor getting *really* excited at the prospect of Jack not taking his wristband off again right away or ever actually - it's not like he'll need him to again after all - he's made his point. He also takes the opportunity to poke me - rather sharply I might add - and remind me that he used the f word back there and expects Jack not to be stupid enough not to pick up on it even if I am. There's gratitude for you...
Monday morning finds me shredding my original draft and changing the point of view. This seems to make the Doctor *inordinately* happy.
In fact it keeps him very happy for another couple of hundred words at which point everything grinds to a halt
I can do nothing on Tuesday morning at all - my husband is prowling around the house bored and so is one of my sons - so I get stuck into bringing itsarift_thing up to date and by midnight my eyes feel like I imagine a pickled onion might and my fingers are numb but it is DONE godammit! And fandom_me offers me caffeine and word processors and chocolate and donutsweeper offers me donuts (what else?) which I cannot eat as I don't really deserve them. Tuesday is also the day unfeathered posts Day After - but more on that later...
Wednesday:
Jack assures me he's more than happy to keep ploughing on *he had his tongue in his cheek when he said it I swear* if I am and I tell him that if the Doctor doesn't start co-operating soon I'm going to do *something drastic* (I don't actually know what and unfortunately both Jack and the Doctor know it!).
Somewhere in the course of the evening I come across a thread - if anyone recognises it? I'll be grateful for the link. (I'm assuming it's attached to something becky_writing wrote) - that runs along the lines of Yeah Jack's definitely the sub in that relationship but we'd really like to see him *not*. It's not a new conversation I know but it does make me pluck up enough courage to, apologising for interrupting her NaNo writing, ask becky_h to run an eye overwhat I've got hoping and dreading she might say it's lousy.
Hoping because if it *is* I can legitimately throw in the towel; apologise to unfeathered for getting her hopes up and offer her some entirely different piece of porn instead.
Dreading because hey I'm a writer and I don't actually want to hear that EVER
What I actually get 2:30am Wednesday morning is I hope she doesn't mind me picking my own quotes here was: "it's hot and good and awesome." but "you've got lots and lots of passive voice" It was probably just because of the time that that passive voice comment *really* amused me. Then I went to bed totally not noticing that the copy she had sent me back didn't actually have an extension on it...
Later that same morning:
The beta copy has opened perfectly well (I still haven't noticed) and I'm working on killing every passive voice except the Doctor's - I am not at home - I am away from internet access (hell I'm in a house that doesn't even have a DVD recorder) I have saved the beta copy in 2 different formats to be on the safe side - there was that whole thing with _medley_ last week where we both ended up with tartan text after all AND it's this I think that proves my downfall.
One Mystery solved
I'm used to working in .doc and nothing else so I don't really notice when I swap from looking at the draft I've tweaked to the one I *haven't* to see which one I prefer - I do this ALL the time. I don't notice till I've hit copy and paste and then hit reload and I've suddenly got 45 pages of writing - one line on every page - some pages entirely blank; some pages looking familiarly tartan!
I spend nearly an hour screen capturing into PaintShopPro and rotating before giving up and deciding to do my errands then go home and download it again. I don't know why - other than that it's a nice residential neighbourhood - that while I'm sitting outside the Post Office I flip Sally the laptop open in the car and find I've got 3 unsecured networks within range. Of course after that driving a few hundred feet down the road to get a better signal was surely the only way to go - it was just one file right??
I do jobs. I do NOT go home. I go back to standing in parent's kitchen tweaking and getting nowhere.
When I do finally go home I sit down in front of laptop and after sitting doing nothing but stare at the page for a few hours - and doing some RL stuff - I FINALLY realise that it is all my own STUPID FAULT so I send a mail off to Becky bemoaning the fact that: "Nine *doesn't* actually want to come - he just wants to stand there in freefall for EVER" Which - thankfully - she gets.
Which is why late Thursday night I'm tapping discretely on the door and telling Jack that if he can't get the Doctor to start co-operating soon I'm going to write him - the Doctor - having sex with Owen...
Jack points out, logically enough, that he doesn't know Owen yet and the Doctor's hardly likely to run into him so that's water off a duck's back (but I don't think those were his exact words) and I retire from the room slamming the door on the way out. I am a big fan of the slammy door - it is very satisfying - and stomp off to post and donutsweeper feeds me middle of the night donuts, again, which I eat this time. I feel sick afterwards but that's more because I have to face the Doctor again and he's not going to like it.
It's now Friday and this drabble of donutsweeper's cheers me up no end but I'm still unable to face the Doctor I go and do something completely different instead - first I icon with some success and then, because it is after all Friday and I have a tw100 drabble due that evening that I haven't even thought about, I go write something as far from Nine as possible which is how I end the day with two drabbles and the beginnings of a - very loose - Jack, Martha 'verse.
Saturday sees me struggling with changing everything since I let the Doctor go drifting off - so he's not the most telepathic of the Doctors but he's still, as he's proved, more than a match for this stupid ape. Honestly I should have known - he has enough mental energy to hold the strings of everything that has, can, and ever might be in his head and still crack jokes. Staying in *that place* as long as he likes without letting me in on what was actually going on in his head wasn't going to prove hard now was it? He's a tricky bastard!
I cannot just lop him off at the knees so I do the next best thing and open a new text document and make him fast forward to the point of orgasm straight after Jack's *ahem* entry by rewriting everything after "Jack's breath rasps loud in his ear as the Captain thrusts inside him - rolling his hips in one long fluid motion." from scratch. And then send just that snippet to Becky so he doesn't know what I've done!
After all the problems I'd had I hadn't actually thought much past the orgasm but somehow ending it there and leaving everyone to assume Jack had just grabbed his clothes and 'hauled his ass out of there' didn't seem right OR very Jack like - granted they're nether of them cuddlers or twiners but Jack would *so* have spent at least some of that night in the Doctor's bed. And since unfeathered had - long before then - surprised the heck out of both of us and written Day After for lt_kitty who requested it when she ran the Time Stamp meme. There was just no way I could leave them not on the same level of understanding as unfeathered had left them herself... But they turned up for breakfast separately and done it from their own rooms or Rose would have noticed - she was in that kind of mood... So obviously in the middle of the night Jack snuck out or tried to and got caught. Cue my last tiny problem: How dark does it get in the Doctor's room at night? There's no windows... Anyone honestly believe the Doctor sleeps with a night light? No. I thought not *g*
You know Jack never did find that other boot - he got so intent on making his exit mean something he did indeed end up walking back to his room barefoot - the Doctor had to drop it into him later on the next day. But that's a different story.