canon slash would be a really nice change

The thing I love most about Torchwood is that anyone could shag anyone.

Sometimes it works out rather badly. I'm still real annoyed at 1-07.

But we have a SF show, a show where it's not starting off as being about queer folks, that just happens to have a lot of queer characters. I love that. A lot.

And yet so far, what have we seen most of?

same old same old. het ships.

We got a couple of tantalising hints of Jack/Ianto, and I really hope they do more with that.

But they also ladled it on about Jack/Gwen, and I'd really like to hope it weren't futile to hope they don't do more of that.

It isn't because I dislike Gwen. Even if I loved Gwen the closest I'd get to wanting to include her is threesome. Like Jack and Martha and the Doctor, as long as there is some Jack/Doctor there's plenty of room for Martha.

But that thing where you've got the two series leads and they have UST and significant glances and set them up with some kind of true love thing... if those leads are a guy and a girl, we have seen that before. I personally have seen that so many times I'm fed up of it. I don't seek it out. I would in fact avoid it, if - big if! - there were in fact an alternative.

Can you name me a show that *doesn't* ship their m/f leads? UST *everywhere* and all of it het.

Classic DW has a lack of kissing. I like that. They get on with running away from Daleks and stuff and it's quite refreshing.

Torchwood? Jack/Ianto. Sexual tension, and m/m. Quite possibly resolved sexual tension, for the win. And we have something *new*.

If there's any other show - any F&SF at all - where there's a same sex relationship, please do tell. I know about Buffy. I love Buffy. But where's the *other* show? And where are the guys?

Jack/Ianto would be shiny new, damn near unique, and exactly what I actually do seek out in my fiction.

Jack/f would not.

bored now!

guys must kiss for my amusement!


and also girls. Tosh needs a nice new girlfriend. Who isn't crazy. Or evil. Or dead.

but that's a whole other complain.

not-secretly

The trouble with fics where a character is secretly a (spy/alien/demon/empath/mind reader/knife fighter/genius/leather clad goth/lost prince/fairy) is that every secretly takes them further away from the canon character and off towards character-with-same-face. I figure one secretly is workable, especially if it's the sort that fits in the gaps. If the secretly would seem to contradict what we've seen it has to be a very very clever one. And if it more than doubles the character points needed to build them then the plausibility goes up in smoke. I mean 'secretly a pilot' happened in one canon and made me kinda *facepalm*.

Yet 'secretly a poet' managed to work. You know, for me. Some people were at least as *facepalm* about that.

And 'secretly a demon summoner in his youth' really worked for me. Or 'secretly hiding a cyberwoman in the basement'. And if either of those added 'secretly working against the organisation they're sworn to serve', well, they've got this existing dark secret that could count as a hint. And 'secretly part alien / part demon' would work too, because they've got this sympathy built in. But doing both at once makes it a harder sell.

The thing is about all those secretlys have turned up in canon stories that I have liked. Just, generally, one at a time.

The other thing is, with fanfic? We're not there for the secretlys. The ones canon provided, yes, but now we all share those. We all go looking for stories about these characters we all know the same stuff about. So every secretly that gets added makes them secretly not-the-same. And potentially changed in directions that move away from whatever a particular reader considers the good stuff.

Stacking up the secretlys, especially when the point isn't 'explain what is observed in canon' but seems to be 'add an interesting story that would look pretty with this face', well... it don't take many before I'm thinking AU at best.

*shrugs*

YMMV




Of course part of it is that 'secretly super powered' actually isn't what I'm looking for at all. Immortals are as far in that direction as I want to go. Because they're regular people, they just had more practice at it. More time for education and experience. They're still pretty much ordinary in the middle of it all. Just a guy. And the stories I like best are the ones where some tiny little human sized person finds REALLY BIG PROBLEM and yet from knowledge makes a plan to fix it all. That's the side of the Doctor I like best, the guy who got the best education in the universe and decided to take it on tour. All that stuff about two hearts or mucking around with radiation in his shoe is just a bit beside the point for me. He's just a guy who lived a lot and learned a lot.

I guess it's because I'm never really going to have to worry about the ethical implications of being able to fly and bend steel with my bare hands but I do frequently feel like I'm going out on a big adventure with nothing but my hours in a library to help me.