Fanfiction (Torchwood/Doctor Who)

[selenak]

The Doctor Who Remix Archive went live, and non-anonymously, too. Here's what I wrote:

Purgatorio (The Paint-It-Black Remix) (8180 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Torchwood, Doctor Who
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alice Carter & Jack Harkness, Jack Harkness & The Master, Jack Harkness & Martha

Comments

[pujaemuss]

Very good. And slightly horrifying!

PJW

[selenak]

Thus was my sinister intention. :) Thank you!

[bats_eye]

That is amazing. A really really lovely story.

I wasn't 100% convinced by the yana twist on my first read but the more I think about it the more I like it. It ties into the first story's argument that a time lord is defined by his memories, by making all of simm!master essentially a human in a time loop with the masters memories downloaded into him from the matrix. It's very poetic, especially with Jack creating the man who tortures him. Admittedly, it's somewhat contrived that he only gets pre time-war memories back as yana when he remembers all of it as steven pre retcon and the memories come from the same source, but it's dr who, contrivances are very much the name of the game.

And the main thrust of the story, isn't that at all. It's about Jack and the master and redemption vs love and it's just wonderfully written and very true to these characters.

I hope the original author doesn't dislike it because I've rarely seen a remix that is such a counter argument to the original as this but I think it's a reply done with respect.

[selenak]

Thank you. Yes, there is some contrivance re: the Yana twist - though believe me, I went back and checked on Utopia to make sure, and while Jack hears Martha say that Yana has a fobwatch, he does not hear Yana's story about having been found as a child on the Boshane Peninsula in the Silver Devastation (because Jack is in the radiation room with the Doctor at that point, and Martha when catching up with them doesn't have time to explain more than Yana = possible Time Lord). Anyway, it fitted the general themes, so hoped it would work.

I hope the original author doesn't dislike it because I've rarely seen a remix that is such a counter argument to the original as this but I think it's a reply done with respect.That is a lovely summary of what I was going for: a counter argument, but yes, one with respect. The whole remix principle is to do something with the ideas the original story provokes; if I as a reader think the original story has already said it all, then I feel it's unsuited for a remix. That doesn't mean a put down of the

[itsnotmymind]

Good fic! Jack Harkness has been given far too much angst, I don't know how you keep track of it all. I liked the looks at what Rhiannon and Alice are doing., and the scenes with Martha and Agent Johnson. And the twist at the end was good.

[selenak]

Jack has, and there must be something in that fixed-point-in-time-and-space-immortality that enables him not to end traumatized into a gibbering non-moving ball of pain, clearly. More seriously, I always did want to tackle Jack after CoE, but never dared to, because of the sheer enormity of what happened. So I looked for other stories back in the day and quickly gave up because, well, 99% of them let Jack deal solely with Ianto's demise. But that was years ago, and many fandoms happened since then, so when I joined this ficathon and read, for the first time in eons, a post CoE story in which Jack, etc., I thought: it's now or never, get thee to the computer, self, and write that story instead of expecting it from someone else.

You know me, I'm Ensemble Girl. I love the Children of Earth characters to bits, and as for Martha, not only do I love her, too, but when I thought the story through, "Jack should talk to Martha!" was the first thing that came to mind. Possible Master Return + Resurrection Ethics + Smart and Compassionate