Log in

No account? Create an account
Fans of Life On Mars
Fic, Watching, Blue Cortina, by DorsetGirl 
30th-Apr-2008 03:08 pm

Title:    Watching

Author: DorsetGirl

Fandom: Life on Mars


Rating:  Blue? Cortina for angst

Pairings: Sam/Gene implied

Word Count:  1,514

















“How long?” he muttered.


“I’m sorry?”




“Mr Hunt, we need to discuss this outside.”












































“That’ll be me. Hasn’t got anyone else.”





























Just nod. Do it. Stay.


“Thanks, Ray.”

















He sat in the chair and watched Sam breathe.






30th-Apr-2008 06:52 pm (UTC)
You know I read this through fast this morning and thought Gene is really OOC here and I don't much like it when that happens unless it's an obvious crack work. So I went away to think about what my comment might be.

Then I came back and just read it through again at a slower pace. That's when it dawned on me that what seemed OOC wasn't actually being expressed to anyone surrounding Gene, only to us the reader. That we were being exposed to his thoughts and feelings while the hospital people were just being exposed to Gene doing his bull-in-a-china-shop impersonation. That's when it snapped into place for me that this was in fact very much in character for Gene -- his body might betray him by being sick, but he doesn't cave in any other way.

Thank you!

Oh, and I really like Ray here too! :D
30th-Apr-2008 10:56 pm (UTC)
Okaaayyy, so: this comment put me in a bit of a cold sweat earlier because - and I'd never realised this before - I never read back for character.

I do spend entirely too much time reading and reading before I post, checking for continuity, order of events, general flow etc, but I don't think much about whether the guys are in character or not. Which is a pretty serious omission.

So, I think you're saying that the OOC wasn't actually too bad in the end, which is a relief, but I would be very interested to know which bits struck you as being OOC - on first reading, and on second.

I guess it's human nature simply not to comment if we can't find anything positive to say, but genuine concrit is very useful and quite hard to come by. Thank you for being honest!
30th-Apr-2008 11:24 pm (UTC)
Welcome to the twisted world of Drayce's rules of commenting. Buckle in for the ramble.

1)IF you have written a story in a fandom I'm active in and said story is written in something strongly resembling English and obviously not had its first draft written in crayon, I WILL comment after reading it.

2)IF you have met my criteria in #1 and you do NOT see a comment from me it is because I have somehow missed your story being posted (it happens occasionally) or the warnings/pairings have put me off. For instance, I have one absolutely concrete squick. I will NOT read incest stories. The only authors I have ever even come close to flaming were ones who did NOT warn for incest. Other semi-concrete squicks are rape, abuse, character death and "Ashes to Ashes" cross-overs *cough*, although heavy angst is OK and I'll read some of the others IF not too graphic (I often ask a friend who has peered over the wall how the land lies).

My point, and I do have one, is this. If 1 & 2 are met, you will get a comment from me and I will NOT say what I don't mean. I am hopefully as polite and encouraging as I know how to be, but I will say something if I think it doesn't work... ask Mikey about my response to one of her stories.

When I say that I went away to "think what my comment might be" I certainly meant to return. I was just thinking of the best way to phrase my response. After all, we all have widely different opinions on who these characters are and I didn't want it to come across as a "demand" that you write Gene the way I want to see him. When I returned to read in a more thorough fashion I realized that I'd tripped myself up with the speed of my first read which had left me with the impression of a very EMO!Gene careening around hospital corridors. Part of that is a good effect because, damn, an out of control Gene would be a careening mess in a hospital corridor. I read it more slowly, hence the comment I actually posted here. Once it snapped into place in my head -- the difference between internal and external dialogue -- I lost that sense from my first reading and now I couldn't put my finger on it for you anymore, unless you read it through fast and think of how emotional it might appear to be in that context.

Erm... I'm sorry. I seem to have rambled on again as is my wont. But really, for the record DG, I never let (hopefully) good manners and a stated intention to be encouraging to other writers stand in the way of an honest reponse.

Edited at 2008-04-30 11:26 pm (UTC)
30th-Apr-2008 11:48 pm (UTC)
now I couldn't put my finger on it for you anymore

Ah, damn. I was hoping to learn something from the way you saw this and what wasn't clear enough. I think actually Gene is pretty emo here. Partly because, as has been said recently, I tend to write Sam/Gene a little more "sweet" and "romantic" than others do. Hmmm. But mainly because I'm convinced this man really does have emotions, and hell, if he doesn't get a little overwhelmed when he thinks Sam - his centre - is going to die, then he's not the man I see at the end of 2.02

Thanks for coming back to me; I hope that if you do think something's gone badly wrong you would say so. I always half-expect someone to email me and say "Take it down NOW, you're embarrassing yourself."
1st-May-2008 12:02 am (UTC)

IF you read it back over fast -- I know it's tough for the writer to do as you are very close to the work -- imagine reading some of Gene's internal dialogue as things he is saying/showing to the medical team. Imagine how OOC that would be.

You do write Sam/Gene in a more sweet and romantic fashion than a lot of writers do and I don't personally have an issue with that, even if it isn't my instinct to do so. They're complex characters in canon, so I see no reason why they can't be interpreted in fan fiction in a wide range of ways. You do regularly have Gene, in particular, say things to Sam that I couldn't force into Gene's mouth if I tied him to a chair, drugged him and beat him half senseless. I couldn't do it. You do it and most of the time I'm delighted by it. A large part of that is that your stories tend to centre around the "private" time of Sam and Gene. All couples have a public and a private face. As stated, while I can't get Gene to say anything overtly romantic, that doesn't mean you can't or that you shouldn't.

Where OOC would kick in for me hard though is Gene saying those things in a PUBLIC venue, to others. I just can't wrap my head around that concept at all. As I've already said I read it fast -- I don't normally do that, leaving reading to when I have time to concentrate -- and I read it as Gene "saying" those things to the medical staff and for me, that would be problematic in the extreme.

Viva la difference, right?
1st-May-2008 12:29 am (UTC)

Um, tell me? (I feel quite uncomfortable not knowing). I know he stepped way out of his box in Wine and Candles. I fought him and rewrote him again and again but he was determined!
1st-May-2008 01:48 pm (UTC)

I'm on my way to yet another bloody meeting so I don't have time to collect examples right now. However, you have nothing to be uncomfortable about, particularly if you look at that sentence in the context of my longer ramble.

You often say that you can't "make" Gene do anything, that he says what he wants to say. Well, to be a writer, is often to live with a benign form of schizophrenia as the characaters come to life in your head.

In your head, you can have Gene say romantic things/articulate his emotional life and feelings clearly to Sam.

What I meant by that sentence is that I CAN'T do that. The Gene that lives in my head can "show" those things but not really say them. It's just like I can write a lot of "odd" Sams but I can't write EMO!Sam to save my life because I just don't see him that way.

It all has to do with interpetation of characters filtered through our own subjective experiences in the world. Just as well really, else we'd all be writing exactly the same thing.
1st-May-2008 03:39 pm (UTC)
Ooh, no, don't take time over it, I just thought if you had one or two you could mention off the top of your head, but don't worry about it.

I can't write EMO!Sam to save my life

Funny you should say that, because I've just written majorly emo Sam for the first time; I normally see him as being rather more controlled and balanced, but it's another part of this series (which is going to need a name at this rate), and he's a very unhappy bunny indeed, very screwed up.

It came out as a stream of consciousness, comma splices everywhere, but on leaving it to cool I think for full impact it's going to have to be punctuated properly. Which is going to be tricky as I don't want to lose the initial feverish rambling kind of feel to it.
This page was loaded May 23rd 2019, 2:41 am GMT.