Peasant

So the third season of Torchwood starts next week! ::does dance of joy::

I know there are a bunch of you who read this journal for the Torchwood meta so I thought I'd explain what I plan to do.

It's going to be shown in the evening every day for five days. Now it is rather past my bedtime, so I will definitely be at least one day behind, and then given real life I may well slip a day or two more behind their schedule. That means I'm going to be avoiding spoilers like crazy. And if I'm going to have to do that anyway then I might as well spread things out in order to savour them, because if this is going to be the last Torchwood we ever get, I want to wring everything I can from it.

All of which means I fully plan to write up meta as I go - and hopefully quite detailed meta, not just reaction and squee posts - but my 'as I go' will like as not be a lot slower than everyone else's. Possibly to the extent of spreading it out over several weeks.

I'm also going to say that if anyone spoils me in comments they will see me in full on wrath mode. Folk who know me will back me up that there is nothing worse than a peasant spoiled so please, please be careful. I'll put reminders on individual posts about what stage I am caught up to, but anyway as a general courtesy to any readers who may be even further behind, I think I will insist on a rule that in a post about any particular episode the commenters may only consider canon up until that episodes. If need be I might do some later posts to reconsider earlier eps in the light of subsequent understandings - if only to laugh and point at my own usual inability to predict things with any accuracy. I like this journal to be a safe place for spoilerphobes, myself included, so I would appreciate your help in keeping it that way.

rahirah made an interesting observation about darkfic:

When I set out to write a story that I think is dark, it's almost always about the characters doing something bad. When I click on a story labelled darkfic, it's almost always about something bad being done to the characters. Not always, either way. But an awful lot of the time. I suppose that Means Something.

Well I think she is exactly right, so I've been pondering what it might Mean and why.

First off, the vast majority of fic that I would consider part of the darkfic genre - either because it is labelled that way, or because it appears on coms such as sickchicks, or because it is by writers who are associated with the genre - is written from the POV of the person experiencing the slavery/torture/domination/rape/general badness. Even in those situations when the author is not very experienced with handling POV, or is trying something experimental, the story will still have the underdog as the protagonist and the reader is clearly intended to sympathise with and see the world through the eyes of the underdog.

The main thing that all this type of darkfic has in common therefore is the lack of agency of the recipient. They are having terrible - sometimes very terrible - things happen to them with little or no choice about it. Even where there is a nominal choice, there are normally huge emotional pressures involved in the set-up of the story to ensure that the choice is in fact just illusory. Whether the 'bad' is sexual domination, corporal punishment, BDSM, medical procedures, torture, slavery, being made to listen to 1980s pop music or something even worse - the common thread that makes it darkfic is this lack of agency.

Now, various suggestions spill around about why people might like that sort of genre. I have often seen it suggested that it appeals to people who are naturally responsible in real life and who find it relaxing to step down from that position and imagine themselves in the head space of someone from whom all responsibility and agency has been removed. Hence the cliché of the High Court Judge playing a naughty schoolboy for his dominatrix. Personally though, I know people who enjoy darkfic and related genres who are in positions of great responsibility and people who have no responsibility at all, they can be from every class from upper to lower, male, female and the people in between, straight, gay, asexual, left wing, right wing and just about every other variant I can think of. So I reckon it is just a kink preference like any other - you either have it or you don't. Maybe we were all frightened by teddy bears as children or have a common gene or were exposed to a certain balance of chemical in the womb - who cares, it is a very common preference and so it is not surprising that the darkfic genre has evolved to express and cater to it.

However, there is still a substantial minority of fic which is written from the POV or focus of the top-dog. At first glance therefore this form of darkfic is not about the person who is experiencing bad things but explores the mindset of those who like to perpetrate them.

Now, naturally these two things need not be mutually exclusive. Someone who enjoys experiencing bad stuff through the eyes of the underdog probably will have an interest in what motivates the one on top. But that is probably going to be more of an intellectual interest - it won't push the buttons in the same way. And if it does push buttons, then I would suggest those were a different set of buttons - no reason why they might not occur in the same person, after all - and that therefore fic from the top-dog's POV should really be classified under a different genre (topfic, perhaps).

But in fact something a little more subtle is going on, which I reckon brings a fair few of these top-dog POV fics back into the darkfic fold. Because if you look at who features as the protagonist in these top-dog-centric fics they have a thread in common. (I'm going to use examples from the Buffyverse since they are the ones I and most of my readers are familiar with.) There are a lot of women - Buffy, Willow and Faith especially - and amongst the men Spike, Wesley and Xander all feature prominently. But you very seldom get Giles, Angel or Riley as the POV top-dog character in a darkfic, let alone people like Darla, the Master or Sebassis - all of whome would fit into the role with very little affront to canon. What then is the distinction?

Well the obvious distinction is that the top-dog POV characters who do appear a lot are all characters with whom it is possible to identify as having underdog characteristics. Buffy, Faith and Willow may all be strong in one way, but they are also fragile women to whom some pretty ghastly things have happened over the years and the audience are used to empathising with their pain. The same with Spike, Wesley and Xander - they have their strengths, but they have also been beaten up, abandoned, outcast or otherwise suffered in canon. By contrast, Giles has suffered, but it is very hard to see Giles as an underdog, the same with Darla, or Riley. They have been knocked about a bit from time to time, but never cowed, and people tend not to be writing them.

So suddenly these apparent top-dog POV stories come back into the darkfic fold because they are no longer quite so clearly about the top-dog, but are about what happens when an underdog lashes out. They are the abused kid growing up to become an abuser, with all the rage, violence and lack of mental control that implies - and suddenly you can see why they might appeal to the same audience.

Angel is an odd one and he could potentially be a top-dog who is really an underdog for some people, and I think I have seen him be so once or twice, but it is pretty rare, probably mainly because most of us are very unused to thinking of a large physically strong white male in that way, and once Angel is given the whip hand it takes a very good writer to keep reminding us of his underdog characteristics. Hence I would say that most darkfic I have seen that has Angel in the top role tends to be written from the POV of the underdog - Spike, Wesley, Buffy or whoever.

So I reckon we have a rule for what is darkfic, and why so much of it is about bad things happening to people rather than people doing bad things - darkfic is by and for those who, for whatever reason, like to imagine the world through the eyes of an underdog.

I can actually only think of one exception to this rule which is the Giles Through a Glass Darkly series by glassdarklyuk, which is about Giles subjugating Spike and it is written from Giles's POV with no noticeable background of trauma for Giles to 'explain' his actions. That could just be the exception that proves the rule, but I would say it is because Glassdarkly is one of the very best writers in the genre, and like all very good writers she innovates, she takes the expected rules of the genre and twists them so that part of the pleasure of reading one of her stories is to see that she is doing something new within the familiar confines. Of course somebody with no other experience of the genre could still enjoy GTaGD just for itself, but to those of us who are familiar with the genre and its unspoken rules there is that extra twist of interest to see Glassdarkly innovate.

So what do other people think? Have I missed the mark widely? Do you consider darkfic to be something else entirely? Can you think of a sub-set of undoubtedly darkfic stories that disprove my 'rule' in some way? What about the enigma of Angel? And what would be a good name for the perfectly valid and interesting genre that rahirah has suggested she likes to write - fic that explores the mindset of people doing bad things? I've written some of that myself (Butterfly Catchers, for example) and it is indeed a great genre to write as an author, but its not darkfic and I don't know what to call it instead.

So I see the warnings debate has come round again.

I reckon there is no perfect solution to this problem, because styles and posting habits vary too much, but this is what I do, and it might help give some ideas to someone.

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So there it is, that is what I do. It's by no means a blueprint for everyone because everyone has their own notions of what is required and different technical restraints, but I hope it might suggest a few ideas. I hope that my system has the advantage of simplicity - at heart it consists of providing a link ahead of any warnings so it is always easy to skip the warnings completely, and then writing around the problem of spoilers as well, and that is something everyone can do without any technical knowledge.

The revolution rumbles on quietly - more tumbrils going past in this morning's paper: looks like we'll be losing the Chancellor in the next few days - so like lots of people, I guess, I've been giving some thought to what I'd like to happen.

1. Fixed term parliaments - say four years
2. But the electorate (not the executive) can force an early election if need be
3. individual powers of forcing a by-election on a constituency by constituency basis
4. referendums on vital issues (the big constitutional questions, war, etc..), and the electorate have some means of forcing one if they want to
5. fewer MPs, say only about 300
6. Hence we can afford to pay them properly
7. A return to parliament doing most of its work in the evenings so most MPs are able and expected to hold down a proper job as well
8. Proper childcare or whatever support arrangements for the tiny minority this might penalise
9. Independent bodies/the House of Lords to oversee rates of pay, boundaries and other things they shouldn't be doing for themselves
10. reduction in the size of the cabinet and pseudo-cabinet government payroll jobs
11. an end to virtually all whipping - pretty much every vote should be conscience based to represent the constituents who elected them
12. an end to guillotines except in exceptional circumstances, so bills are properly debated and discussed
13. PM questions twice a week not just once
14. Only English MPs can debate or vote on English matters.
15. all committee proceedings, expenses and everything else you can think of to be published on-line

And here is a small list of things I don't want.

1. A written constitution - I don't see any advantages and it will only encourage abiding by the letter of the rules not the spirit, which is what got us in this mess
2. any more tinkering with the House of Lords while the problems with the Commons are unresolved
3. Separating the executive from the Commons and having them directly appointed non-MPs - that sounds the least democratic suggestion I have heard. (A government of Mandelsons!)
4. An English parliament or any other cock-eyed solution to the West Lothian question - we've got a perfectly good parliament, we just need the Scots and Welsh not to vote when it only concerns us.
5. Proportional Representation - I used to like this idea in my youth, now I am convinced it gives too much power to the parties and prevents all legislation except compromise. It is important that the rate of legislation be slowed down, but that should be done by insisting on proper scrutiny and debate, not as a by-product of something else.

Obviously I've got a whole other wish-list of how I would like to see the country organised and run, but those are my constitutional ones. The biggest, most important one though, of course, is the thing almost everyone wants:
A general election
(say around September to give everyone time to think and then prepare properly) so that these reforms can be introduced by a government and a parliament with the proper democratic authority to implement them.

If we're going to be paying for a moat at least make it a decent moat - something with room for two swans abreast.

Feeble

This is the obligatory Dreamwidth post.

I've got an account - http://peasant.dreamwidth.org/ (note lack of underscore) but I'm really not doing anything with it until I've seen which way the wind blows. When I can raise the energy I will subscribe to everyone who has subscribed to me, but having just lost my laptop in an accident and having had to do a complete reinstall of everything on the new one, that is way down my list of priorities so may be postponed for a long time.

I'm also not quite sure how I will use the account, if I do, so for the present I am only granting access to the most obvious people until I work that out. It's not as if I ever post so you will hardly be missing anything, but feel free to throw a huff and feel frightfully hurt and upset if you wish. Please join the line over there for outraged silence, or help yourself to the drinks in the corner for working yourself up to yelling at me. Needless to say this policy is designed to insult as many people as possible because I hate you all.

Oh and I seem to have a bunch of invite codes, comment if you want one and I will see what I can do. Priority will be given to people with usernames likely to get snaffled quickly and those who offer large bribes or make their comments particularly amusing.

Exciting news for all those who care about green methods of generating electricity.

Finetics.

Sadly the online version doesn't include the diagram showing exactly how it would work or the graph measuring species of fish against 'kettles boiled'.

Hear, hear, sir.

Do vampires evolve in the Buffyverse? An interesting question, and one that could go to the heart of our concept of them, effecting how we view their relative humanity, their social system, indeed everything about them.

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In an idle moment I glanced at some Merlin fic today, and to my surprise discovered it was set in the present day, with Arthur as the Prince of Wales and Merlin as a newly qualified doctor. Now I didn’t read on because I have spent too much time in hospitals to want to read a story set in one, but with the time thus saved I got thinking.

Merlin the show is of course set in a non-existent period of Britain’s past which can only be described as A Time of Legend (in John Hurt’s voice, naturally) but we will for the sake of argument call it historical, and yet here was someone setting a Merlin fic in present day Britain. Nothing wrong with that, there is a long and noble tradition in fanfic of altering the setting. Yet I myself write fic for a show with a modern setting, but I choose to set my fic in the past. What exactly is going on here?

Fanfic is of course about taking an existing canon and twisting it slightly. There are the famous categories ‘more of’ and ‘more from’. ‘More of’ being gen – essentially a new episode of the show or short story of the book, while ‘more from’ is everything else – extending the canon, playing with the possibilities, taking the basic characters of the canon and sticking your thumb in the play dough to see what happens if you push just there. And ‘more of’ is notoriously rare, while ‘more from’ makes up the bulk of the fic being written.

And there is that rule (I can’t remember who invented it but I last saw it referenced on rahirah’s journal so perhaps she will remind us) about not diverging by more than two degrees of difference from the source. So you can change one thing (the gender of the characters) and it is still recognisably fanfic, you can just about change two things (the gender and the setting) but change any more than that (the gender, the setting and the species) and you have lost your audience. (This was nicely illustrated in the Merlin fic mentioned above, where despite the modern setting Merlin had kept his magic powers.) So I think it is fair to say that fandom likes changing things in its fic, as long as the change doesn’t go too far.

Now, as I remarked to alixtii the other day, fantasy as a genre is all about taking recognizably human characters and setting them in fantastical settings while retaining their basic human features. This is true even if they happen to be rabbits, moles or big green blobs. And people who like reading or watching this sort of thing always highly value the realistic human characters, but for some reason we also value – indeed many of us positively require – the distancing element of the setting. I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but I have no interest in modern people in a modern setting doing entirely mundane things. That is called real life and it is boring.

So, as a sweeping statement, I think it is fair to say that most fic is written for canons that have a distancing feature of this nature. The shows that fandom likes are sci-fi, fantasy or historical. Fic does get written for mundane shows of course – I have no doubt that in the wide and wonderful world that is the internet somebody is churning out Eastender’s fic – but they don’t do it anything like as often. So I would say that the bulk of fen are attracted to this distancing. We are thoroughly used to it in all the shows and books we favour and are very comfortable with its unwritten rules.

The rules are of course simple:

1. People must behave like people. They may have extra abilities, but they don’t have greater insight or capability to handle other people. They will also experience the full range of human emotions - even if they are nominally robots or soulless vampires in which case the underlying character arc will always be about them learning to experience the full range of human emotions.
2. The setting must be sufficiently distant from the mundane world to feel different, yet similar enough to allow people to behave in a basically recognisable human fashion.
3. Pterodactyl.

And finally, let me remind you that fanfic is written by and for fans. And thus there is an underlying assumption of familiarity with the canon. That is the most basic foundation rule of everything we do – we know our stuff backwards. Perhaps not every reader can quote large chunks of the canon verbatim, not to mention knowing exactly which colour socks everyone was wearing in each episode and how the underlying metaphor of Loss plays into the serving of onion soup in the fifteenth chapter of book nine, but there is an assumption that many of them can. And this assumption is written into the fanfic accordingly. Fans aren’t just familiar with the show, they are so familiar with the show they regard its setting as familiar, comfortable, normal territory.

And I realised that that all of this was exactly what was going on with the piece of Merlin fanfic I had seen. For that writer, the show itself had become so familiar it was the mundane, and by setting it in the present day the material suddenly acquired a fresh distance – it became, in effect, a fantasy of a fantasy.

OK, well that is maybe stretching things a tad far. I don’t know the author from Adam, for all I know she set it in the modern day because she was uneasy writing something in the rather nebulous Time of Legend. And up until today I would have said that I set my own fic in the past entirely because I prefer writing that period. But the fact remains that her readers and mine – presumed, being fans, to be just as familiar with the canon as we are – would have read the story with that sense of distance, and interpreted it in that light. For a fan, so comfortable with the rules of distancing that they are absorbed unconsciously, the mundane can become the distant for a fantasy show.

In fact, it could almost be said that sooner or later that sense of distancing is going to be demanded by fans. Even if, bizarrely, it means apparently shedding the very fantasy that drew us to the show in the first place. Someone like me doesn’t just like fantasy distancing, I require it, otherwise I find the entertainment boring. I need my shiny pterodactyls and my nicely recognisable people in a distanced setting, or I nod off. And once the original setting has become so familiar, through the canon itself and then by having that familiarity reinforced time and time again by reading fanfic – the canny author is going to respond by producing a new sense of distance. They will shift the setting, or twist the characters in ever new and freakier ways to find that sense of distance that we all so love.

In other words, my friends – wingfic isn’t just inevitable, it’s mandatory.

In the several decades I have been writing The Sign of Fanged Four (coming to a computer screen near you sometime this century, probably) I have discovered a few things about writing mysteries and I'm going to set them down here. Partly to clarify my mind, partly to have a record in case I start to forget Important Stuff and partly in the hope it might someday be useful to one of you in some small way.

So, things wot I have learnt...
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Torchwood fans, since on examination it seems the world hasn't ended, don't forget 2.15-3.00pm today, Radio 4, the Torchwood radio play in celebration of CERN turning on the Large Hadron Collider.

Sheep-like, I do the twenty first lines meme.

Except I have lost track of the rules and don't know if they are supposed to be newest first or oldest first. These are newest first, on the grounds that by the time we get to the really embarrassing ones at the bottom more people will have wandered off to find something interesting to do.
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From which we can conclude that I tend to either have very long, complex, descriptive (and in at least one case extremely awkward) opening lines, or brief snatches of dialogue. Doubtless Freud would know what to make of that.

What is really alarming is that at least a couple of them intended as jokes (18 and 20) come across as merely very pretentious when stuck out on their own like this.

Arising from recent conversations, I was wondering if there are people out there who feel that they would like to write - fanifc, original fic, anything at all really - but feel they can't. I'm not talking about an existing writer having block, I'm talking about people who for whatever reason feel they cannot start to write at all. So this is probably an appeal to the lurkers as much as anything, but is there anyone out there who would like to write but feels prevented?

It is one of my personal creeds that anyone can write. If you are not illiterate then you are also capable of writing creatively. And I also believe that writing is a skill that it is worth doing badly - that is, it is worth while to write for your own pleasure, and to set down those stories which only you can tell, even if the result is 'no good' in the terms by which people usually measure these things. But I also also believe, and have learnt from repeated experience, that anyone can improve, that practice and teaching can raise a mundane writer to a good level or a good one to an excellent level.

But sadly personal experience has also taught me that there are plenty of people who don't believe those things, and frequently they believe them on a very personal level. 'I can't write because it won't be any good' seems to be a depressingly common view. Yet having on at least two occasions encouraged such people to write, with wonderful results, I know it to be nonsense. Human beings can tell narratives, it is hard wired into our brains. If you can recount to a friend the dress you saw at the shops, you can structure a narrative. If you can tell a lie, you can create a plot.

There is a lot of concern amongst social commentators about people whose stories are not being told. In a loud and noisy world, those who shout loudest tend to get the most attention and ensure the world is structured to their own needs, and those who only shout quietly, or not at all, tend to get forgotten, so this is not a trivial concern. But you can't tell other people's stories for them - you will get it wrong - so I think the best you can do is to encourage and help them to tell those stories for themselves. Here on the internet though it is easy to assume that anyone can write their own stories. After all the barriers are lower here than anywhere else - if you are online then the technical means to write are already available to you. And yet there can be other barriers, psychological barriers or barriers of an entirely different nature, that may be preventing people from saying what they would otherwise say. I don't know exactly what those barriers might be, I can make some guesses based on what I have seen and been told, but they are mostly guesses, so I reckon the only way to find out is to ask.


(Responses are welcome either in the comments or by private message if you would prefer privacy. To comment, click the 'leave a comment' link, type your comment in the box and click 'post comment'. Or click here to send me a private message.)

Due to upcoming RL events I need to minimise my stress at the moment so with regret I am putting the concritathon on permanent hold. I do apologise because I know a lot of you were very keen to do it. I'm not maintaining some copyright on the idea though, so if some keen soul with time on their hands wishes to step up and organise it, please be my guest. Otherwise I can only suggest you all look over the list of folk who said they were interested and pick one or two to contact privately about exchanging concrit.

For the same reason I've also defriended a few folk, entirely because of fandom drift or other divergence of interests, naturally no insult is intended.

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Speculation, not spoilers. Well, unless you haven't seen 4.12 yet, in which case you need to stop reading now.

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The only vaguely intelligent thing I have to say about Moffat taking over from RTD is that Moffat seems more interested in his own created characters than in the Doctor himself. I suppose Blink is the most extreme example, but The Girl in the Fireplace said far more about Reinette than it did about the Doctor, and The Empty Child was more about Jack and Nancy. Maybe that will change when the Doctor is his own character. Especially if it is a new Doctor, of course.

Somebody please make it clear for the hard of maths - when exactly will this change occur? The shows that will air at Christmas 2008 and the three or four specials in 2009 are presumably being written about now, so are they still under RTD's control or has the change in fact already happened?

Just to let folk know:

There definitely will be a Concritathon, but due to RL commitments it will have to wait a while, probably until the end of June. Apologies for that.

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OK, so it looks as if there is definitely enough interest for a Concritathon. I am so pleased. I have always felt that learning to give and take critical opinions on fic is a key part of fandom.


However, a couple of interesting logistical questions have been raised.

Firstly, I said I would like to make it pan-fandom. However, how difficult do people think it would be to crit something in an unfamiliar fandom? I personally tend to think of crit entirely in literary terms these days - what works and does not work as writing. But fanfic is far more than just literature and maybe giving proper concrit on fanfic should always assess the story as fanfic and hence require knowledge of the fandom? What do other people think?

And if people do think that knowledge of the fandom is required, are there any suggestions for how we can ensure that people give crit on the fandoms they know. I was thinking that as part of the sign-up process authors would have to say which fandom their fic was written in, and I suppose we could ask readers to list which fandoms they are willing to read, but what if there is a mismatch of numbers? Last time I made everyone choose one fic to crit and randomly assigned them a second one, the choosing still wouldn't be a problem, but randomly assigning becomes difficult if there is more than one fandom to consider.

How do people feel about having a randomly assigned fic? I found it very useful last time because it stirred up the mix, made me read and hence concrit a fic I would never have known about in the normal course of fandom life, and thus brought all sorts of new aspects to the whole business. But would people freak out if they found themselves expected to crit a fic in a completely different fandom? Would you rather choose what fic to concrit and not have a random fic at all?


Secondly, there is the issue of comment length. Last time, I asked that writers provide a post in their own journal and then the public concrit was added to that post as comments. However, this caused logistical problems when the concrit exceeded the LJ comment length. Now a suggested alternative would be for the readers to post their concrit in their own journals and just send a link to the writer. This would though put a certain separation between the writer and the crit - the posts would essentially become critical essays rather than the direct feedback that concrit is more normally associated with. It would also pass 'ownership' of the crit from writer to reader. How do people feel about that? Writers, do you wish to retain ownership of the public concrit or are you happy to see the extra distance between yourself and the reader? Readers, will you find that extra distance freeing or discouraging?

A couple of folks have remarked recently that they would like to have another Concritathon, and looking back it is 3 years (!) since the last one so it must be high time.

For those of you who weren't around then, a Concritathon is where writers each nominate a fic for which they would like to receive concrit - constructive criticism - and then they and any readers who wish to play all write concrit for the nominated fics. So a bit like a ficathon but centred around providing concrit for one another rather than producing new fic.

If you want to find out more about how it worked last time then check out my concritathon tag.
I would probably stick to a similar format as last time but maybe make it panfandom since a lot of us have moved on to fresh pastures in the last year or two.

It is a great way for us to learn as writers and as readers how to give and receive concrit and hopefully all improve our skills in the process. I for one picked up the best beta I have ever had (waves to darkapple!) in the last Concritathon.

So, writers who want to improve their writing and readers who want the chance to flex their critical muscles - anyone interested?

I am having a blank moment. I want to customize my S2 style to include the new expand comment abilities, but not only can I not get it to work, I have completely forgotten where the helpful S2 communities are so I can't find out how other people have done it.

For those who know their way around S2, I have added the following code:

var Link expand_link = $c->get_link("expand_comments");
if (defined $expand_link)
{
print """<li>""" + $c->expand_link({"text" => $*text_comment_expand, "title" => "expand this collapsed thread in place"}) + """</li>\n""";
}

And I now have nice little links that say 'unfold' next to every comment, but when clicked on a big fat nothing occurs and I can't work out what else I need to include to get them work. I can't even locate the correct section in the javascript that would perform the unfolding.

So any suggestions on either what to do or where to go for help would be appreciated.

Spoilers: Doctor Who 4.3: Revenge of the Ood and very slight ones for Torchwood 2.2: Sleeper


I have seen a lot of squee about Revenge of the Ood - nothing wrong with that, we squee therefore we fan - but also a lot of people complimenting it on the adultness of the theme, to which I do wish to raise my hand and say 'er, hang on...' because one thing that theme was not was adult.

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A post via metafandom this morning produced a comment from alixtii along the lines that he had often seen slashers complain when their pairing became canon. Now I have seen that myself, I have done that myself - somewhere there is a post of mine complaining about just how uncomfortable I felt when ( cut for spoilers for Torchwood S1, Robin Hood S2, Angel S5 )

So I am curious, has anyone ever felt that for a het ship? And if so, is fandom involvement indeed the key factor? Or is there some extra factor relevant to slash that does not apply to het? And if you think that then any thoughts on what that extra factor might be?



Oh, by the way, virtually nobody responded to my last post - I am assuming that was just because you all have busy lives and it was tl;dr. If it was in fact because it was completely incomprehensible I would deeply appreciate it if someone gently mentioned the fact so I can do something about it. I rather liked my pyramid theory and would hate to think it made no sense.

I’ve been thinking about what I would like to see in Season 3 of Torchwood. I suppose everyone else has been through some similar emotions to me upon hearing the rumours about the format changes. ( no spoilers, just speculation )

This will be probably the most convoluted fanwank ever, in an attempt to plug at least some of the gaping plot-holes in Exit Wounds. I doubt I’ll get all of them but I’ll give it my best shot.

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Have I missed anything?


*ETA: thanks to rahirah for the correction. I don't know what I was thinking, of course John wouldn't buy a t-shirt.

With spoilers up to 2.13 Exit Wounds
( this way for clicky boxes )

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