Fic: Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

[jjpor]

Fic: Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

So, I was sitting down this morning to write some fic (in between watching the Grand National - my donkey didn't even finish! - and the footy). I swear that I was trying to write the next part of Battlelines; I swear. However, instead I wrote this, straight off the bat, more or less in one sitting (which is unusual for me).

You see, I've been thinking about some of the stuff I’ve written about the Time War and Romana’s part in it. And more particularly, about my own feeling that in some sense I may have wussed out a little in ignoring some of the more difficult strands of continuity in the novels and audios, in particular the whole issue of Romana III and the hardening of her relationship with the Doctor. So this grew out of that; maybe it’s an apologia, maybe just an effort to organise my thoughts on the matter. I borrow some elements here from the Eighth Doctor novels, although it isn’t set in that version of continuity, and from Lawrence Miles’s Faction Paradox universe, and must also acknowledge a debt to my good buddy clocketpatch, whose fic about Romana in E-Space got me thinking on some of this stuff again. Anyway, here it is; as always, Doctor Who and its concepts belong to the BBC and to their individual creators; in particular, the Daleks belong to the Terry Nation estate:

www.whofic.com/viewstory.php

Comments

[gm-andy.livejournal.com]

I look forward to reading this one once it is up. Should be very interesting.

[gm-andy.livejournal.com]

Read. Reviewed. You is awesome. :D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am, aren't I? XD

No, not even I am that egotistical - I was trying to be cool like Four, honest! Anyway, thanks for reading and I'm glad you liked it.

[clocketpatch]

That was lovely you know, if lovely is the word? It doesn't seem right to call it lovely when the actual story was so harsh, but then, I am tired, and a lot of things go wibbly when I need sleep. I was *this* close to crying at a few points, at:

"She knows the Doctor would disapprove, were he here, would probably side with Varstad, but the Doctor is an idealist; he has never had to direct a War, and she hopes that he never will."

When Romana is thinking about Leela and Andred

And quite a bit towards the end.

There are some glorious insights into human (Time lord?) nature in this, and I think I'll be coming back to read it again in the future. There fearful symmetry of the two paths had me shaking in my boots. I appreciated the pause for humour in the middle of it: "Such a heavy-handed attempt to cow the visitor with sheer scale; quite adolescent, she considers; Rassilon, or whoever really built this place, must have been overcompensating for something." Made me lol.

Yes, and the glimpse of Morbius, who you keep saying that you're going to write fic on.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, Morbius. I'm doing that one soonish, if I can just get to grips with my pesky WIPs; I've kind of sworn scary oaths on strange alien relics that I'll get at least one of them finished before I embark on another multiparter. Sworn it. Yes, so Morbius has assumed some sort of strange mythical status for me in my weird private fanon, officially the very worstest thing ever to happen to Gallifrey (and a lot of people outside Gallifrey!) between the rumble with the Great Vampires and the Time War, and instrumental in the "origin stories" of both the Doctor and the Master and possibly a few other famous Time Lords tbc. Basically, Morbius starts out with the best of intentions (or so he tells himself!), but ends up being an object lesson in how not to go about shaking up stuffy Time Lord society.

And I know there is absolutely no evidence for this in the TV story, where Four talks about Morbius as if he never met him, but I swear there's a line, later in the story, where Morbius says something like "we meet again Doctor" when in fact we haven't seen them meet before that. And if I've just imagined that, I reckon I can still fudge canon a bit and write my story, just because I reckon it'll be kewl...

Anyway, thank you very much for reading the fic and for your kind words; I suppose this was my defence of my "soft" wartime Romana against the Romana III of the novels and some of the depictions in other media. As well as being a restatement of some of the things I was trying to say in some of the other Time War stories I wrote, trying to say them more clearly maybe. I still think I may be going too easy on the Time Lords; sure, they're not as bad as Daleks, but they're not really the good guys either, are they?

What I think I'd like to do at some point is a ground-level view of the War; see Eight and co fighting it, at the business end. I find it hard to write Eight, though, which is why I usually cheat and play up his Wartime trauma so he is in effect a different character. That's cheating, though. Still, it needs to be done, one day.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh. I might read it, if I'm feeling brave. I'm not very much into reading angst, nor Time war stories, but I suspect I'll have to take a peek. ;-) The title's lovely anyway.

What I want to know is who was entering a donkey in the Grand National in any case and how they got away with it? Eh? (:lol:) (Confession: I totally forgot!!)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

I know, and a three-legged blind donkey at that!! I thought they had rules against that sort of thing...

You can't go wrong with Robert Frost quotes, I always say; it's something I picked up off Clocket! In fact, I only started reading Robert Frost because she featured it in one of her fics, so I'm grateful to her for that too. The story's called "Nothing Gold Can Stay", and it's also the only reason I started writing Romana-in-the-Time-War fic too. Truly, if it weren't for Clocket I don't know where I'd be today, LOL.

I think the Time War's kind of a Marmite thing; I know some oldschool fans who prefer to pretend it never happened; I like it because it lets me dwell on the horribleness of Daleks and toss around throwaway references to planets exploding and zillions of people getting blown up and stuff. I'm shallow like that. :)

[clocketpatch]

Let's you get the most bang for your action movie buck eh?

*blushes* It's always really bashful/awesome-making to discover that you're a fic inspiration; especially for such wonderful fic! And really, you can't go wrong with Robert Frost! (I've got to read more of him though, because for the life of me I don't know where the head lice poem is from... but, that throw-away line is one of the best I've ever seen. And SO very something the Doctor, or Romana, would say)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

The line about seeing ourself as others see us is actually by Robert Burns (the antimatter twin of Robert Frost?! Burns? Frost? Geddit??), the man who's so popular in Scotland that they named a night after him. The poem's called "To A Louse" and it's written in that strange Scots dialect he wrote most of his poems in (basically, the words are spelled the way Jamie talks).

And, yeah, while we're doing the mutual appreciation thing, that story of yours is really very good you know; it's on my little list of fics that I've read that have made an impression on me and made me want to try and write different, more ambitious sort of stuff than I otherwise might (because you know, left to my own devices I'd just churn out reams of stuff about those Edwardian Torchwood people and Seven and Ace being awesome, which is admittedly would not necessarily be a _bad_ thing, but still...). And, well, being a typical insecure male, I'd never admit to getting teary at, like, _fanfic_, but it did make me do that manly-man "Gahh, I've got something in my eye...again!" thing a couple of times. XD

[clocketpatch]

I'd be perfectly sated with Edwardian Torchwood and Seven an' Ace hi-jinks. XD

I've actually rec'd those Edwardian Torchwood fics to a few people in real life; they're my point in case for good fanfic; even more so because I'm not a fan of the show they're based upon!

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Here, have another crumpled envelope of used banknotes! I like the tone of your remarks lately, Clocket; my head is now officially too big to get out of the room! :D

Yes, retro-Torchwood...the appeal of pistol-packing chaps and gels in tweed, thwarting the dastardly Hun and his extraterrestrial collaborators has not deserted me yet...they're well down the plotbunny pecking order, for now. I was thinking the other day about the old woman in that Season 1 episode of SJA, the one whose husband was some sort of Indiana Jones-esque archaeologist tangling with Sontarans in the 1930s Middle East. Or that was what she seems to be talking about, anyway. There's fic there, I think; there's no way her hubby wasn't Torchwooded-up (or at least being debriefed by them in a old-school-tie brandy-and-cigars-at-the-club sort of way when he fetched up back in Blighty)... Go away, bunnies! Leave me alone!

[clocketpatch]

I am so in this for the banknotes; they're paying my university tuition!

[thisbluespirit]

Heh.

(And I do think you may have to worry about yourself when you have icons for Sutekh, the Master and a Sontaran... Very nice, btw!)

I have a problem with Robert Frost. It's called the Demon A-Level English teacher whose favourite poet he was. (I managed to get through the two years and not go off Chaucer, Shakespeare, even Hardy, but RF? He's great. Sadly, my English teacher was awful, awful and RF was his favourite poet. Worst teacher I've ever had. Studying on Mending a Wall with him. Other than Stopping By Woods on A Snowy evening, I can't bring myself to go back there. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch a dramatisation of Tess again, either. Sorry, you probably didn't want to know that. Poor Robert Frost. I must read his poems and get past that. Hmm. Said teacher would make a good alien.

What was I talking about? Oh, Time War. I don't object (although poor Eight - he's destroyed Gallifrey at least twice now and he looks so harmless.) I'm just not interested in the details and I don't want to hear how Leela died (I'd rather she didn't.) But I can understand the attraction of the Big Unexplained Plotty Swirly thing in space, or whatever.

:-D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose you can see why someone would want an icon of Delgado!Master, because he is kind of excellent, but Sutekh?? and a Sontaran?? I don't know, I sort of have to admire Sutekh; whatever else you may say about him, there was someone who really enjoyed his work. And I always felt like the Sontarans got a bit of a raw deal, going from Linx, who was like some sort of uber-capable one-man A-Team (how did the Rutans think they had a chance when the Sontarans had an army of guys like him?!) to being basically the jokes of the universe. A situation that I, hypocritically, do nothing to remedy by making them the subject of ridiculous Victorian music hall numbers in my fic. The SJA Sontaran two-parter is more or less the entire Sontaran story-arc condensed into fifty minutes of television. Seriously.

My English A-level experience made me feel about DH Lawrence the way you feel about Frost; we had to read his collected poems, which are, quite frankly, not that great (he was definitely a much better novelist than a poet), and ever since I have been unable to shake my prejudice against him. His wife was a cousin or something of the Red Baron's, though, interestingly enough.

And yeah, regarding the Time War, I am the kind of person who says things like "you know, some things are better left mysterious", while simultaneously making up ridiculous backstories about Mrs Who and Susan's mum and the Doctor's mysterious birth, and exactly what all of RTD's completely bogus and throwaway references to Time War battles actually mean (the Fall of Arcadia's one I always seem to come back to for some reason). It's a weakness of mine, I guess. :D As you say, it's a Big Unexplained Plotty Swirly thing in space...

[thisbluespirit]

Well, you've just made me feel grateful. I cannot imagine the trauma of trying to do D H Lawrence with that English teacher. Tess was bad enough and the whole endless, disturbing discussion on what precisely Alec did to Tess (including stopping Polanski's film to rewind and point things out). *turns faint with horror* It doesn't bear thinking about.

(I'm fairly confident I can trump your bad teacher. If, however, yours also made you do practice exam essays and then went round the class making everyone read them out aloud - and I do mean timed, practice exam essays scribbled so quickly you couldn't read your own handwriting back - and stopping them every so often to comment. (If it was Hardy, you could, if you were brave, save the rest of the class by using a Different Term to describe the rape scene, because he would have to stop and discuss that in detail. And he'd never heard of The Mabinogion. Asked me if it was some sf novel. You know, thinking about it now, we really should have told someone about all this, but you just kind of accept bad teachers, like bad weather at the time!! (He did get made to resign a couple of years later). Mind you, I shouldn't let Merle get away with ruining a good poet. I shall go find a collection of Robert Frost and exorcise the ghost, I think.

Erm... back in the worlds of DW...

I'm quite good at navigating the Big Swirly Plotty Things in Space, but I get easily sucked into orbits by smaller Planets of Daft AUs and throwaway lines. :-)

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

"the whole endless, disturbing discussion on what precisely Alec did to Tess"

??!! I mean; ??!! We had a GCSE science teacher a bit like that; you know, with a slightly...unhealthy enthusiasm for certain facets of the subject. The teacher who taught us DH Lawrence was sort of the opposite; she looked as if she was going to die of shame at times depending on how, er, forthright, the particular bit of text under discussion was. The net effect was the more or less the same, however; not much actual education getting done at the end of the day. Now, the other English teacher we had was the one who got me into Christopher Marlowe (who I came to think of as Shakespeare's funnier, more evil twin), so I have that much to thank her for.

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

I'll be reviewing this (and some of your other work) on the Teaspoon itself but I have to say that I'm so glad you had Romana chose the less ruthless path. To me she'll always be a freedom fighter rather than a politician (and RTD and co are already blaming her for the war *glares*).

I'd be able to relate more to that poem more if it wasn't so damn... forresty. We don't have natural forests in the Faroes. Now, ocean on the other hand: ''Water, water everwhere and not a drop to drink!'' That I can relate to.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed it. Yes, I know what you mean; hardcase!Romana as depicted in the EDAs doesn't really sit well with me, if I'm honest, on a sort of instinctive level; it feels wrong to me. I don't think blaming Romana for the war makes any sense at all; it quite clearly started sometime in the 70s; I mean, by the time of Resurrection, the Daleks were talking about assassinating the High Council, when there's no evidence in previous stories that they even knew about Gallifrey, so the Time Lords must have done something to annoy them. Not that Daleks need a reason to be annoyed. Don't get me wrong, Gallifrey was a bad place full of bad people (or painfully misguided people, anyway), apart from the Doctor and Romana of course!, but the Daleks were just bad news. It's very conventional, and I think comes from RTD too, to say the Time War goes back to Genesis of the Daleks. I think it actually goes back to Day of the Daleks; no way would the Time Lords tolerate the Daleks fiddling with history. That's my theory, anyway. :)

Ocean; we Brits are supposed to be an island nation, but not _that much_ of an island, I'll wager. There must be some great Norse poems about the ocean, them being into poetry and ships the way the were, but I'm afraid that's not my field. :D