Another fic commentary meme

[john_amend_all]

Memed from jjpor:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My shiny new masterlist is here. In case that makes you feel spoilt for choice, this should cut out the underbrush of drabbles and ficlets.

Comments

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Please tell me about this: ;D

"Anything interesting in the paper?" Clyde asked.

Rani threw the tabloid aside. "Just another story about what's going to happen in the Professor X specials."

"And?"

"This time they reckon Violet's coming back for the grand finale."

"She got killed off."

"I know, but that's what it says."

"Don't waste your time." Clyde leaned over, picked up the paper, and turned to the sports pages. "It's just rumours."

"Even rumours have to come from somewhere. I wonder where?"

Sarah looked up. "Oh, all sorts of places. Reading between the lines of press releases, footage from people's camera phones, stumbling across a piece of paper that someone's dropped. And of course, sometimes you get to talk to someone on the inside. We'd usually call them an 'informed source'."


*
Somewhere, deep below the headquarters of the Global News Syndicate, the Entertainment correspondent of the Daily Views placed his palm on a scanner. Two huge steel doors slid ponderously aside, revealing a pitch-dark room beyond.

Repressing a quiver of anxiety, the intrepid newshound took a few paces into the darkness.

"Any stories?" he asked. "That Professor X article went down a treat. Got any more stuff like that?"

In the blackness, a hideous mechanical voice answered him.

"I heard you call, my capatain! Neeeheeee!"

Slowly, the lights came up, revealing a loathsome tentacled creature twitching in the shattered remains of an armoured travel machine.

"In the next but one special," Dalek Caan continued, "The Professor nearly tells Wanda he loves her. But before he can spit it out, the Xyrons burst in and grab her! Neeeheeeheee! I like this game, I do, I like this game..."

[john_amend_all]

I'm not sure exactly which event prompted this fic, because there have been so many over the last few years. I try to avoid spoilery articles, but when the Net is covered with photos of Billie Piper on rainy Cardiff streets or wild stories that this or that returning villain will be played by a leading soap star du jour, some are unavoidable. Bearing in mind that the reports were either true or bonkers (with considerable overlap between the two), it seemed only natural that they would originate from a mad oracle.

And the other reason that I wrote it is that I'd wanted to write Dalek Caan as Bluebottle pretty much ever since Journey's End. Given Caan's insanity, he probably would read his stage directions out loud, too, given half a chance; and he would, like Bluebottle, be inclined to treat everything as a game. (For anyone unfamiliar with Peter Sellers' performance as Bluebottle, the What Time Is It, Eccles? sketch can be found on YouTube.)

Professor X, of course, is what the people in the Whoniverse watch every Saturday evening. We have only been graced with an occasional glimpse (chiefly in No Future by Paul Cornell) at this timeless classic of camp, with its remarkable parallels to the show we know and nitpick. The Xyrons, on the other hand, are cyborgs (played by robots) from the TV show Timeriders in the Missing Adventure Time of Your Life. If they grab you, as I recall, it means they want to dismantle you for spare body parts, so unless the Professor can save Wanda she's in for a whole lot of trouble.

And now for the commentary track.

Rose:
Can I make a complaint?

Clyde:
Hey, what are you doing here? You weren't even in this one.

Rose:
In this show, Violet's supposed to be me. Come on, it's obvious. She's named after a flower and everything. So how come she ends up dead and the Professor's about to declare his love to this Wanda?

Sarah:
Perhaps Violet isn't meant to be you. It could just be a coincidence. They do happen, you know.

Rani:
When was the last time you investigated something and it turned out to be just a coincidence?

Sarah:
I think... 1978. No. Wait. That turned out to be a Quantum Twister. So it's got to be 1972, then.

Clyde:
Quantum Twister? Thought that was an ice lolly.

Mr Smith:
Might I point out—

Rani:
You weren't in the story either, you know.

Mr Smith:
As I was about to say, this is not the first story by this author in which Miss Tyler played a character by the name of Violet. Moreover, in the story to which I am referring, there were disparaging references to her acting and to her departure scene.

Rose:
Yeah, you're right. Just wait until they hear about this on bring_back_violet. Can you patch me into Livejournal, Mr. Smith?

Mr Smith:
I am complying.

Well, actually, I had both Rose and Lynda in mind when imagining Violet, and she was killed off because I wanted something even more impossible to come back from than being sealed away in a parallel universe. But I must admit that Rose doesn't always get the easiest of rides in my fic.

This commentary being now more than twice as long as the original story, I shall stop.