Torchwood bunny
Jan. 4th, 2007 06:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI previously thought up a plot bunny for Torchwood, with Jack and Ianto. I've decided it could work even better after that season end. Granted, Jack would have to actually come back, but we know he will. And then there's a whole lot of explaining to do.
Plot bunny was that an alien device gives them emotionally equivalent paired flashbacks that both see/experience. Which is a device I want to use for my ghosts eventually. But it's also because I'm a Highlander fan, and flashbacks are integral to my plan of What Stories Should Have.
Was pondering today and figure that a story don't feel complete to me without flashbacks, BUT that doesn't mean that the present day elements are just an excuse to put flashbacks in. Because the present day stuff tells you what the flashbacks mean. It gives them a context, and a relevance, and shows what they're doing to the present day. Like in lit about Ibsen and how the past intrudes on / shapes the present being a major theme.
Why I like the idea of a plot device to let characters see each other's flashbacks is that we the viewers learn so much about characters that other characters don't get to know. It makes them kind of lonely with other characters on screen but intimate with the audience. Which is one kind of fun, but slash would be all about being intimate with each other. So, want to give them the view we get from home.
Part of the fun with fic is teasing apart what each character does and does not know about each other character.
Part of the annoyance about the website torchwood.org.uk is it keeps using IM conversations to change the who-knows-what. If the website is to be believed Gwen told everyone about Jack looking exactly like wartime Jack, and Toshiko told Ianto that Jack told her about Jack being immortal (which would make Owen by the time he pulled the trigger the only one who would definitely consider it murder), and she also told Ianto about Jack/Jack. Which... I want to fic Ianto's reaction right there. In general, there's a reunion missing from the story - how did Ianto feel about getting Jack back, how did Jack feel about Ianto's apparent attempts to make sure he didn't get back, why did no one throw Ianto's words from Cyberwoman back at him as a reason why they weren't listening to him about leaving Jack behind, did Ianto have to explain to Jack how irrelevant that was, did Ianto get a chance to explain anything at all... And how does Ianto feel about Jack/Jack, considering he just shot a guy while declaring Jack needs Ianto.
That's soooo much stuff.
I actually kind of want to write it as them not having any time to deal before Jack's, er, worrying few days. Because dear god does that up the angst quotient. And leave Ianto wondering about so many more layers of issues.
Ianto finds out about Jack/Jack, thinks Jack dies, then finds Jack vanished... and for the sake of this fic, when Jack gets back, finds out for sure Jack left on purpose.
ooooh, are there ever issues.
And that makes it such a lovely place to begin fic.
Alternative place to put it is much nearer Cyberwoman, but then we go AU almost, and I like playing with all available canon. I mean I waited to write Buffy fic until the series was over. Maybe Torchwood fic can happen between seasons.
Ideas that already are in the bunny: Being a long term carer, the months that Ianto had two oft conflicting duties, to Lisa and to Torchwood. What parts of Jack's experience that reflects. Jack as carer to Earth, currently in an awkward adolescent phase, and to the team, which acts very much likewise some days.
Logically this flashback thingy could show Jack and Ianto each as the other sees them. Which would be... something to build up to and yet still leave vague or contradictory.
Humans very rarely feel just the one thing at a time. People is complicated.
So I was going to have an alien ship communicating through the flashback thing. Darmok, only more direct. Show the shared stories. A bit like that message home on the torchwood.org.uk site, only communicating sideways as well as along. Er, I mean the guys seeing each other's stuff, as well as getting the emotion-message the alien is trying to send.
Alien has crashed, long ago, before Torchwood set up in Cardiff. New road disturbs it - I can use some classic ghost in the road stuff, only give it a Torchwood spin with alien metal in crashed cars or something.
End of story for the alien would be to get the ship to lift off again, which would be the big "I'm going home!" moment.
And we know exactly what moment that is for Jack. We just saw it.
And Ianto would have opinions about that one.
But thing of it is, the fun from these things is to pair things that are emotionally very similar and yet the emotions arise from very different situations.
If "TARDIS, joy!" is paired with "Lisa, joy!" then you get something for Ianto to get really sad about and an ending unlikely to lead to sex.
If instead it is paired with "End of deployment, away from the war, joy!" or "End of term, back to parental unit, joy!" then you get very different endings.
The figuring out what the flashbacks are all about pair could be fun too. Because the message there is communication/translation. So, could have Ianto having Welsh-to-English-and-back type difficulties. Paired with?
... What is Jack's primary way of relating to anyone who doesn't seem to want to kill him right now (and some that do)?
... I have this idea involving tentacles and skin that changes color. I'm not quite sure if I'm shameless enough to write it. But, communication! Very... tactile, but rewarding.
Sex-as-talking is probably not quite how Ianto thinks of it. So one could have a fun sort of reaction from him.
How to get the rest of Team Torchwood to react negatively to the alien... Because I want a moment of happy, and then a moment of WTF from Jack and Ianto and watching them get mad at the others.
I have this image of them driving off in the SUV, and then Jack not quite being able to leave people behind even if he really is that pissed off right then, and reversing back to let them get in. The back. Where the Weevils usually go. Because if they're going to act like them they can just ride in the stinky cage part.
Because I think on a Torchwood episode the alien does not go home, he goes boom instead.
How to get a negative reaction from all the other three?
Because to outvote Jack+Ianto, even with the possibility those two are being mind controlled, we'd need a united front.
I was thinking it would be hard to persuade Toshiko, but then I realised I was being very dumb, because if the Plot Device happens to go around their necks, look shiny, and makes them see things in their heads? Really not going to be inclined to trust the alien this time.
She could cite that bit off the website actually, that message that made such a mess.
She'd have to be the one to do anything sneaky and technical, so she'd have to really believe it.
Ghost on the road = road crashes = deaths.
Maybe accidental, but...
how was it they described Mary's victims? Like after a traffic accident, where the steering column punches through the chest. Yesno?
Too much overlap makes it very clunky, but bits and pieces make it look a familiar sort of bad, so, maybe.
Gwen... deciding to be mad at... anyone?
Well we've seen what it takes to get her to pull the trigger. But I don't think Rhys in danger is a thing I want to borrow very often.
Maybe Owen in danger. Except that was more a don't-pull-trigger stimulus, iirc.
Which leaves Owen deciding to contradict Jack again.
... That would take a hell of a lot of doing.
Ah... Life Knife + Risen Mitten can take care of both of them at once - what is it *doing to Ianto and Jack* to be the receivers on this alien communicator? Is communication all the alien is getting out of it?
... If I want to go for a ship go boom ending, maybe there's more to it. Which puts in a bit more mystery, suspense, and plot, all at once.
Because for the alien to need to communicate that bit about being a carer, they must have someone on board in a Lisa-like situation. Not cyberwoman, that would be a no brainer. But on life support and desperately dependent.
Maybe needing something? Maybe needing lives.
Desperate, alien, using local resources... finding Jack.
All you can eat buffet indeed.
So - way to get the other three to decide the ship goes boom?
Give them a legitimate reason.
Make it dodgy and borderline, sure. Maybe the alien doesn't mean to hurt people and just uses ones that accidentally get caught up in tech, or that are dying anyway, or just very rarely.
I mean if Mary actually *needed* the hearts to stay alive - organ transplant, frequent rejection - then her situation gets a lot more complicated and therefore interesting.
How would they figure about draining life?
... corpses that look very very dead when they should only be fresh?
Someone who was on the phone when they died - gives us a time stamp on them being alive, a way in to the situation, and possibly a camera phone snap of something very alien.
And a corpse that turns up rather too dead.
Oh, ghost story again - there was a crash that was witnessed by multiple drivers but when the police got in and had a look they found a months old wreck with a skeleton in it. Score!
Jack & Ianto being the end of the telephone, they couldn't get so much as a hint that the others were planning anything, or the alien would know it.
Maybe J&I wouldn't know there was anything wrong with the two of them?
Making the life drain coincidental would be a bit much. But, alien tech with human batteries? Including the comms?
One thing is, my first impulse with any story is to make it Jack/Ianto and just focus on the pair of them. Or, er, any Torchwood story, for those specific guy, but mostly I mean I start with a pairing idea. But if I add the rest of the team I have to add plot and give them stuff to do. Which makes it a better, albeit longer, story.
Yet as I need to tell it from Jack & Ianto's pov to get the flashbacks in, and as the rest of the team are hiding stuff from them on purpose, I get to not have to write Owen. Or Gwen. Win-win really.
See, none of this is getting my essay done.
Or my RFJ3 fic.
... but it is making the Torchwood bunny look more and more like a viable fic, I think.
Plot bunny was that an alien device gives them emotionally equivalent paired flashbacks that both see/experience. Which is a device I want to use for my ghosts eventually. But it's also because I'm a Highlander fan, and flashbacks are integral to my plan of What Stories Should Have.
Was pondering today and figure that a story don't feel complete to me without flashbacks, BUT that doesn't mean that the present day elements are just an excuse to put flashbacks in. Because the present day stuff tells you what the flashbacks mean. It gives them a context, and a relevance, and shows what they're doing to the present day. Like in lit about Ibsen and how the past intrudes on / shapes the present being a major theme.
Why I like the idea of a plot device to let characters see each other's flashbacks is that we the viewers learn so much about characters that other characters don't get to know. It makes them kind of lonely with other characters on screen but intimate with the audience. Which is one kind of fun, but slash would be all about being intimate with each other. So, want to give them the view we get from home.
Part of the fun with fic is teasing apart what each character does and does not know about each other character.
Part of the annoyance about the website torchwood.org.uk is it keeps using IM conversations to change the who-knows-what. If the website is to be believed Gwen told everyone about Jack looking exactly like wartime Jack, and Toshiko told Ianto that Jack told her about Jack being immortal (which would make Owen by the time he pulled the trigger the only one who would definitely consider it murder), and she also told Ianto about Jack/Jack. Which... I want to fic Ianto's reaction right there. In general, there's a reunion missing from the story - how did Ianto feel about getting Jack back, how did Jack feel about Ianto's apparent attempts to make sure he didn't get back, why did no one throw Ianto's words from Cyberwoman back at him as a reason why they weren't listening to him about leaving Jack behind, did Ianto have to explain to Jack how irrelevant that was, did Ianto get a chance to explain anything at all... And how does Ianto feel about Jack/Jack, considering he just shot a guy while declaring Jack needs Ianto.
That's soooo much stuff.
I actually kind of want to write it as them not having any time to deal before Jack's, er, worrying few days. Because dear god does that up the angst quotient. And leave Ianto wondering about so many more layers of issues.
Ianto finds out about Jack/Jack, thinks Jack dies, then finds Jack vanished... and for the sake of this fic, when Jack gets back, finds out for sure Jack left on purpose.
ooooh, are there ever issues.
And that makes it such a lovely place to begin fic.
Alternative place to put it is much nearer Cyberwoman, but then we go AU almost, and I like playing with all available canon. I mean I waited to write Buffy fic until the series was over. Maybe Torchwood fic can happen between seasons.
Ideas that already are in the bunny: Being a long term carer, the months that Ianto had two oft conflicting duties, to Lisa and to Torchwood. What parts of Jack's experience that reflects. Jack as carer to Earth, currently in an awkward adolescent phase, and to the team, which acts very much likewise some days.
Logically this flashback thingy could show Jack and Ianto each as the other sees them. Which would be... something to build up to and yet still leave vague or contradictory.
Humans very rarely feel just the one thing at a time. People is complicated.
So I was going to have an alien ship communicating through the flashback thing. Darmok, only more direct. Show the shared stories. A bit like that message home on the torchwood.org.uk site, only communicating sideways as well as along. Er, I mean the guys seeing each other's stuff, as well as getting the emotion-message the alien is trying to send.
Alien has crashed, long ago, before Torchwood set up in Cardiff. New road disturbs it - I can use some classic ghost in the road stuff, only give it a Torchwood spin with alien metal in crashed cars or something.
End of story for the alien would be to get the ship to lift off again, which would be the big "I'm going home!" moment.
And we know exactly what moment that is for Jack. We just saw it.
And Ianto would have opinions about that one.
But thing of it is, the fun from these things is to pair things that are emotionally very similar and yet the emotions arise from very different situations.
If "TARDIS, joy!" is paired with "Lisa, joy!" then you get something for Ianto to get really sad about and an ending unlikely to lead to sex.
If instead it is paired with "End of deployment, away from the war, joy!" or "End of term, back to parental unit, joy!" then you get very different endings.
The figuring out what the flashbacks are all about pair could be fun too. Because the message there is communication/translation. So, could have Ianto having Welsh-to-English-and-back type difficulties. Paired with?
... What is Jack's primary way of relating to anyone who doesn't seem to want to kill him right now (and some that do)?
... I have this idea involving tentacles and skin that changes color. I'm not quite sure if I'm shameless enough to write it. But, communication! Very... tactile, but rewarding.
Sex-as-talking is probably not quite how Ianto thinks of it. So one could have a fun sort of reaction from him.
How to get the rest of Team Torchwood to react negatively to the alien... Because I want a moment of happy, and then a moment of WTF from Jack and Ianto and watching them get mad at the others.
I have this image of them driving off in the SUV, and then Jack not quite being able to leave people behind even if he really is that pissed off right then, and reversing back to let them get in. The back. Where the Weevils usually go. Because if they're going to act like them they can just ride in the stinky cage part.
Because I think on a Torchwood episode the alien does not go home, he goes boom instead.
How to get a negative reaction from all the other three?
Because to outvote Jack+Ianto, even with the possibility those two are being mind controlled, we'd need a united front.
I was thinking it would be hard to persuade Toshiko, but then I realised I was being very dumb, because if the Plot Device happens to go around their necks, look shiny, and makes them see things in their heads? Really not going to be inclined to trust the alien this time.
She could cite that bit off the website actually, that message that made such a mess.
She'd have to be the one to do anything sneaky and technical, so she'd have to really believe it.
Ghost on the road = road crashes = deaths.
Maybe accidental, but...
how was it they described Mary's victims? Like after a traffic accident, where the steering column punches through the chest. Yesno?
Too much overlap makes it very clunky, but bits and pieces make it look a familiar sort of bad, so, maybe.
Gwen... deciding to be mad at... anyone?
Well we've seen what it takes to get her to pull the trigger. But I don't think Rhys in danger is a thing I want to borrow very often.
Maybe Owen in danger. Except that was more a don't-pull-trigger stimulus, iirc.
Which leaves Owen deciding to contradict Jack again.
... That would take a hell of a lot of doing.
Ah... Life Knife + Risen Mitten can take care of both of them at once - what is it *doing to Ianto and Jack* to be the receivers on this alien communicator? Is communication all the alien is getting out of it?
... If I want to go for a ship go boom ending, maybe there's more to it. Which puts in a bit more mystery, suspense, and plot, all at once.
Because for the alien to need to communicate that bit about being a carer, they must have someone on board in a Lisa-like situation. Not cyberwoman, that would be a no brainer. But on life support and desperately dependent.
Maybe needing something? Maybe needing lives.
Desperate, alien, using local resources... finding Jack.
All you can eat buffet indeed.
So - way to get the other three to decide the ship goes boom?
Give them a legitimate reason.
Make it dodgy and borderline, sure. Maybe the alien doesn't mean to hurt people and just uses ones that accidentally get caught up in tech, or that are dying anyway, or just very rarely.
I mean if Mary actually *needed* the hearts to stay alive - organ transplant, frequent rejection - then her situation gets a lot more complicated and therefore interesting.
How would they figure about draining life?
... corpses that look very very dead when they should only be fresh?
Someone who was on the phone when they died - gives us a time stamp on them being alive, a way in to the situation, and possibly a camera phone snap of something very alien.
And a corpse that turns up rather too dead.
Oh, ghost story again - there was a crash that was witnessed by multiple drivers but when the police got in and had a look they found a months old wreck with a skeleton in it. Score!
Jack & Ianto being the end of the telephone, they couldn't get so much as a hint that the others were planning anything, or the alien would know it.
Maybe J&I wouldn't know there was anything wrong with the two of them?
Making the life drain coincidental would be a bit much. But, alien tech with human batteries? Including the comms?
One thing is, my first impulse with any story is to make it Jack/Ianto and just focus on the pair of them. Or, er, any Torchwood story, for those specific guy, but mostly I mean I start with a pairing idea. But if I add the rest of the team I have to add plot and give them stuff to do. Which makes it a better, albeit longer, story.
Yet as I need to tell it from Jack & Ianto's pov to get the flashbacks in, and as the rest of the team are hiding stuff from them on purpose, I get to not have to write Owen. Or Gwen. Win-win really.
See, none of this is getting my essay done.
Or my RFJ3 fic.
... but it is making the Torchwood bunny look more and more like a viable fic, I think.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 11:17 am (UTC)It's also because I'm a Highlander fan, and flashbacks are integral to my plan of What Stories Should Have.
A hearty "me too". Flashbacks, especially historical flashbacks, are the champagne of the fanfic world.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 02:41 pm (UTC)Watched A Doll's House again.
I really don't like the BBC Performance version. Nora seems like such a flighty manipulative thing, all the time, and Torvald seems like such an utter bastard. I realise those notes are going to be there in the words, but there's other ways to show different stuff too.
You know what's really unhelpful?
Being so Torchwood obsessed that my brain keeps wandering into Torchwood fanfic mode.
Because Ianto = Nora makes pictures in my head.
... sadly now including Ianto dancing the tarantella, because my brain is like that.
... in a flowery shawl.
*headdesk*
There's also the little thing where mostly my brain keeps trying to write this here fic.
I've got the beginning turning up in my head in pieces. Little confrontations, Jack finally realising how bad he's screwed up, Ianto being utterly formal, polite, and completely impersonal with him.
Ianto: Is there anything else you need, sir?
Jack: You.
Ianto: long blink, look away just a little, sag a tiny bit like that hit. I don't believe so.
... I'm going to fail intro lit because pretty welshman in my brain is being emo.
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
no subject
Date: 2007-01-04 03:28 pm (UTC)useful stuff on writing erotica