Quick meme!

[eponymous_rose]

Snagged from flo_nelja!

Ask me a question about one of my stories. It can be absolutely anything in any fic and I will tell you the honest-to-god answer. Don’t hold back.

That makes it sound much more dramatic than it probably will be, but yes. You can ask about any fic, including ones I haven't finished, or mentioned ages ago and never followed up on, etc. Questions about plot/characterization/the process of writing it are fun, too! General writerly questions. It's all good!

Comments

[wondygal.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'm going through your fic list and you have no fic with the Second Doctor? Isn't this sacrilege or some such? Be right back with a question.

[wondygal.livejournal.com]

Dear eponymous_rose, my question is about your Peri ficlet Red Pen, because I am a crazy Peri-loving person. What was your motivation for writing it? I mean, did you just came up with the idea that a pen was useful, or wanted to make a point about Peri's relationship with the Doctor? As a follow-up: how come your writing is so awesome?

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

I am a crazy Peri-loving person.

There aren't nearly enough of us about. Hooray, Peri!

did you just came up with the idea that a pen was useful, or wanted to make a point about Peri's relationship with the Doctor?

I tend to write these little ficlets to work out some puzzle that's been bugging me about characterisation, or plot, or some bizarre premise that's been rattling around my head for no conceivable reason. This one's a bit hard to define, but Peri's relationship with Six was very definitely the motivation, overall. And then I had to come up with some ordinary sort of gift that would nonetheless come in handy, and at some point I realised that the Doctor could make pretty much anything useful. So I looked on my desk for inspiration. There you go!

As a follow-up: how come your writing is so awesome?

Oh, you. *blushes*

[wondygal.livejournal.com]

puzzle that's been bugging me about characterisation

Hmm, you also do a great job of that with that latest post-Doctor's Daughter drabble.

I'll stop and let other people play now.

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

It is very definitely sacrilege, especially given how much I love that era! While the Second Doctor does make several appearances in my multi-era fics, I haven't yet worked up the courage to write him a full-length fic. This is mostly because I haven't seen nearly enough of his serials/reconstructions yet. I'm working on it, though! Soon I will resume my Great Classic Who Rewatch of Power.

Oh, right! Actual question. I should answer that, too!

Hmm...

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

I pick Higher Education - how did you decide which 'extracurricular activity' the Fifth and Seventh Doctors were going to participate in? How did you pick cooking and ikebana? (I ask because I can understand how the recorder, Venusian aikido and dancing might present themselves, but I don't recall seeing five cook anything, and I don't know wnough about Seven yet to recognize ikebana from anywhere.)

And...um...I had another one but I can't think of it right now. Back later!

Re: Hmm...

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

Hee, well. You've caught me out - I was on a deadline and hadn't a clue what to pick for Five and Seven. I wanted to avoid too too much fannish cliché, so cricket didn't really seem like an option, but in retrospect I think possibly some version of chess would have been more appropriate for Seven. Really? It comes down to the fact that I had very little knowledge of those eras when I wrote the fic - I'm still pretty vague when it comes to Five, but at least I've seen more of the Seventh Doctor now!

It would have worked better, I think, to have just gone with either five things we see in canon or five things we don't that are still plausible. This would be one of those fics I'm not too pleased with, overall. Hee!

And hooray for further questioning! More deep, dark secrets await. Possibly.

[rosa-acicularis.livejournal.com]

Ooh ooh, call on me! I've got a question!

About Fives Places the Doctor Never Took Liz Shaw, actually. In the third part of that story, there's that bit of conversation in which...well, I'll just quote it back to you:

Liz composed herself enough to stare sternly down at him and ask why he hadn’t told her he’d been hurt.

“Oh, Liz,” he said with a sigh. “I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“I don’t know if it’s escaped your memory,” Liz said sharply, “but I do have a rather insignificant little degree in medicine. You wouldn’t have lost nearly as much blood if you’d let me take a look earlier. I wouldn’t have fussed over you.”

He stared up at her, then looked away, and suddenly he reminded her of the little lost boy he’d been, from time to time, back on Earth. “No,” he said, with a hint of a smile on his lips. “I don’t suppose you would have done.”

But when he’s wounded by a Marshank Beast in 47th century Belgravia and she bends to examine the wound, he pulls away from her touch.

Aside from this being, you know, totally awesome, it also complicates the already fascinating dynamic between them that you've established in the fic. I mean, it's not as if he doesn't have confidence in her abilities, and yet there's this reluctance on his part to let her take care of him in that way. And perhaps it's somehow to do with the change in their relationship now that he's back to being the Doctor and not the exile Dr. John Smith?

I guess this isn't so much a specific question as a general wondering, but I'm truly curious: what are your thoughts on this bit of awesomeness?

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

Overall, I am really pleased with the way this one panned out, especially given that I hadn't seen much of Three at the time - and because I hadn't seen much (or any?) of post-Liz Three, it was easy to just spin his character in an entirely different direction and see what happened.

But blah blah blah preface, because this whole hypothetical AU is still one big mystery to me - I'm not sure I understand the characters or their motivations all that well, which is a sure sign that I'm going to want to explore this further. (Ooh, there's a challenge I'll set myself at some point - get people to name drabbles/shortfics/Five Things fics I've written and have them expanded. Hrm.) I shall give it a shot, though.

The focus of the story is the power dynamic between Liz and the Doctor - at the end of series seven, he's constantly pushing against the boundaries that she (and the Brig, of course) represent. Extrapolating that, once he gets the TARDIS back, he's pushing against nothing, so inertia rears its ugly head and he keeps on pushing. I think Jo pushes back a bit, which he needs; she grounds him, admits when she's scared, forces him to hold back just a bit and stay in some sort of orbit around the Earth. (We see just how hard he's really been pushing when he regenerates and disappears as soon as he can. Jo imposes limits on his freedom in an intangible sort of way, because she's making him want to be... gosh, I almost wrote "tied down", but that's getting into strange territory. I'll rephrase. She makes him want to stick around, to have limits to define him, because it works. Why it works is beyond my brain at the moment, so.)

And here we enter the fic's hypothetical - Liz wouldn't push back, because she'd recognise that it's just the Doctor being childish, straining against bonds that are no longer there. Liz is more abstracted, less connected to Earth and people and things and more to ideas and concepts. Much like Sarah Jane, she feeds the Doctor's wanderlust with her own - but unlike Sarah Jane, it's not out of a desire to experience the universe with the Doctor. It's simply a desire to experience the universe, full stop. So the Doctor keeps pushing, and she keeps letting him, rolling her eyes occasionally, and that's their friendship, because, in a way, it works too.

It's unstable, though - Jo and the Doctor have some level of stability, a ball rolling back and forth in a bowl, always coming back to the centre. Liz and the Doctor are... oh, heck, I want to say "above the Level of Free Convection", because I am a terrible nerd and need to cut out the thermodynamics metaphors. But one of them pushes and they both move, going further and further from the Earth, and "Home" is certainly the fifth place he'll never take her.

But I'm not answering the question. I don't honestly think that his reluctance to let her take care of him is any sort of change - I think that if he were injured on Earth, he wouldn't let Liz fuss, because injury is another restriction, and when humans = exile in his brain, it's just closing the trap. He's still pushing, out in... 47th century Belgravia, trying to break the barriers that just aren't there anymore. Inertia, right?

And that was, sort of, a conscious decision on my part, because to change this particular facet of the Doctor's relationship with Liz is merely interesting. Having it stay the same says a whole lot more. Minimalist characterisation!

Ah, sorry about the essay. Must meta moar, or something. Thanks for the awesome question!