stunt_muppet

Maybe there should be a "writing wittering" filter as well? I don't know. I have too many filters.
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I decided, for some reason, that the Doctor and Liz should have a conversation about string theory in a fic I'm writing. Or rather, a conversation in which the Doctor tries to explain superstring theory and Liz tells him he's full of it.

And, in order to make them have a conversation, I figured I should know something about it myself.

Yeah, five hours on Wikipedia later, I still don't know crap. I may have sort of a vague idea about what bosonic string theory is about (which is the version Liz would be familiar with, probably, unless her era takes place prior to 1974, and which is flawed in major ways, explaining why Liz would dismiss it), but superstring theory? I've been following every wiki link and staring at it for hours (when I should have been working, mostly) but I still couldn't tell you what it even vaguely means.

Moral of the Story: Don't make your characters talk about things you don't understand. Which is hard when they're both supergenius omnidisciplinary scientists.

Of course, I could probably just make stuff up for the Doctor's dialogue, given that Time Lords have probably progressed beyond string theory entirely and moved into, I don't know, yarnball theory or something. And, from what I can tell, string theory is somewhat incomptible with the Whoniverse, considering the Whoniverse's presentation of alternate universes (which don't make a lot of sense to begin with, but shush). And, strictly speaking, I know no one but me is actually going to care whether or not their technobabble is accurate.

But still. This one detail and my extant curiosity about string theory have eaten up so much time and I might not even include their conversation in the finished fic. Boo.
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Also, the anonmeme has made me want fic in which Jo Grant is Ianto Jones' mother. And in which Ten learns of this. And in which he then tries several highly subtle methods to find out if Ianto is half Time Lord.

rhia_starsong informs me that there's already quite a lot of fic out there where Ianto is half Time Lord, but that none of them use mommy-Jo fanon. Which seems odd to me, because, really, if you're going to have him be half Time Lord, making him Jo's son is really the easiest way to go about it*.

Oh, don't look at me like that. It's better than having another renegade Time Lord out there copulating with humans, isn't it?

*Not that I endorse this proposition, because I am still a Bio major, and the idea that humans and Time Lords can reproduce with one another sets off all my You Fail Biology Forever, Ficcer alarms. But I...might be willing to sacrifice it for Ten's double-take upon seeing Ianto. And the awkward conversations with Jo to follow.

You'll note that I didn't say I'd sacrifice those objections for half-Time Lord Ianto, just for the implication that he might be. I have PRINCIPLES, dammit.

Back to the writing-desk.