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This wasn't produced for any particular reason I just think we can all agree on this no matter what

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Sherlock Holmes and the adventure of the boring case (they were asked to look for lost puppies)

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Jack's behaviour during Exit Wounds is soooo interesting to me. I want to know why the writerly decisions were the way they were for this episode. Like on one level it's not very good writing but on another level it's actually really cool characterisation decisions.

At the start of the episode, Jack and John are both playing two roles at once. John is Gray's puppet --which Torchwood don't know yet-- but through trying to make his actions seem genuine he's also trying to hint that they're not. Jack is for the most part trying to be the leader of Torchwood, but also trying to connect with John in some way in order to get him to stop, because he thinks his actions are genuine. Even when the ruse is revealed Jack is still aggressive and hostile to John -- because he doesn't know Gray's role in all this.

As soon as Gray appears, Jack regresses. For the entire rest of the episode until Tosh's death, Jack is not leader of Torchwood, he's not a dashing hero, he's not John's partner, I don't think he's even Jack Harkness. He regresses entirely back to a teenager who feels guilty for his brother's abduction.

I think from my guess, Jack was probably about 14 when Gray was taken. And he regresses straight back to that. All he can say is that he's sorry, all he can do is say that he tried to find him and couldn't, he can do absolutely nothing but confess his feelings of guilt over and over. He lets Gray yell at him and says nothing because he believes he deserves it. Gray stabs him and Jack doesn't struggle. When they're in the field in 27 AD, Gray only stops because John tries to intervene, and he pushes Jack into the grave. And as John observes at the end of the episode, Jack just accepts his burial as well. He takes it on as penance, as though the past 150 years of immortality and all the time before that he spent trying to find Gray weren't enough.

But I think what interests me most are his actions when Gray finds him in the morgue. The drawer slides back and the first thing Jack says is "I forgive you." And then he walks away as Gray yells at him. When he turns back he says tearfully "I forgive you. I gave you absolution. Now do the same for me."

Jack has spent his whole life looking for Gray, unable to find him, horrifically guilty and desperate to be relieved of that guilt. But Gray isn't looking to be forgiven, because he doesn't feel guilty about what he's doing. He's looking for revenge, for torture. (And honestly considering what he says to Tosh after he shoots her, I think he's hoping someone will kill him.) He doesn't care about Jack forgiving him because he wants Jack to feel guilty and he wants Jack to suffer.

In the uncut version of the script, John tells Jack that when he found Gray, Gray thought John was Jack and seemed so happy, like everything would be all right if Jack appeared. But that didn't happen. Someone else rescued Gray. And in Gray's eyes, Jack has lived for so long and has had so much time and never found him, and I think he's full of pain and rage at that and at all the things he endured.

And then there's Jack, who just wants to be free of all the guilt and grief he's suffered over Gray. But "I forgave you, now you forgive me" just can't work. Because Jack is willing to accept that guilt and that penance and he believes that it is his fault, whereas Gray doesn't think he has anything to be forgiven for. And it feels to me like such a childlike thing to say, to insist on: "I did this for you, now it's only fair that you do the same for me, even though our circumstances are not equal."

Jack's dialogue throughout his interactions with Gray are simple sentences, apologies, pleading, ineloquent explanations, while in contrast Gray's dialogue is made up of monologues of weirdly poetic and flowery prose, even though it's gruesome and violent. Jack, confronted with his brother in a position of power over him, regresses back to a younger version of himself and his extreme emotion means words fail him, while Gray has grown and learned from I assume both his torturers and the victims around him, so his extreme emotions have been honed in entirely towards anger and revenge, and he has years of things to say.

I think Jack's confrontation with the source of his own guilt means he is almost entirely unable to act. I think if he'd had to subdue Gray in a more violent way, he wouldn't have been able to do it. That he can do it in a way that begins with an embrace is important, because I think it was almost his only option. As soon as Gray is unconscious, Jack is back to being Captain Jack Harkness as he releases John and Gwen and Ianto from the cells.

But with Gray, in front of Gray, because of Gray, he is not Captain Jack Harkness. He's a scared, guilty, grieving, desperate teenager who wants his father back and who feels like this thing that was completely out of his control was all his fault, and that feeling of guilt has been building for 150 years into this huge thing that is the basis of most of his motivation. So confronted with its source, he goes back to that teenage self and says and does desperate and almost ridiculous things, because he's a teenager who wants to stop feeling like the whole world is on his shoulders and like he did such a bad thing and like this thing he couldn't fix was his fault, not because he's an adult who is able to carry the weight of responsibility.

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The face card on these two this whole season eughhhh, also Im such a sucker for subsurface scattering god its so tasty (I'm stalling hard on my chelley week paintings don't look at me if you follow for portal content...)

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i need to know, have you ever drawn the eighth doctor? underated fav of all the deranged dw fans

Yep, only once though, back in october for the Six Fanarts challenge.

I need to draw him again because I feel like I can do better now!

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*clears my throat*

imagine meeting your ex again and then throwing him off building only to find out he’s immortal…

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I know Ianto fucked around with a guitar for a little while but I feel like he is a bass player through and through. I will kill anyone who disagrees sorry :/

Thinking about a Torchwood Band AU because why not.

Jack would be their main singer. Idk if he would play any instruments but he would be their singer

Ianto would be on Drums 100%. It just fits him.

Owen would be electric guitar I think. Also possibly a singer but he would mainly do electric guitar.

Tosh would also be guitar / possibly bass. I don’t think she would sing though. Just bass for her :)

And idk about Gwen. I want to put her as singer as well but part of me thinks she would do guitar with Owen.

I think they would all work on lyrics together but it would mainly be Tosh and Gwen writing but idk.

This is coming from someone who has never been in a band before and doesn’t really know how they work btw so there might be something big I’ve missed soo…. oops?

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Even MORE art I farted out during ANOTHER camping trip‼️

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I keep writing things I dread to reread, I read back through my most recent oneshot and I was just grimacing through the first half. Torchwood books have visceral language like "skin flag" and fat bubbling through the skin and blood strings in the mucus and all that gross stuff, I have a couple paragraphs of smut. They are the same.

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I love this scene

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10 things for 10(ish) people you'd like to get to know better

@erinella98 threw this at me and who am I to refuse a list of questions

last song: How Do You Sleep?, John Lennon. Idk man goes kinda hard...

favourite colour: Red ❤️

last book: For physical reading, I recently bought the Waterstones Classic "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (very pretty book) so I've been reading through that, but I'm also now 15 hours into the Lord of Shadows audiobook narrated by James Marsters, I'm quite enjoying that and not just because James Marsters has a voice.

current obsession: Torchwood is a constant and I will never escape it. Leonard Cohen sits comfortably on the side but thankfully I'm not losing sleep thinking about him like I was in January.

last film: Rewatched Bohemian Rhapsody, what a movie <3

last telly show: Merlin!! I'm having a Merlin rewatch at the moment (long overdue), I'm at the start of the last series and I've slowed down because I don't want Arthur to die...

sweet/savoury/spicy: Savoury

relationship status: Single (WAAAAHHHHHH)

last thing I googled: "Picrew". I was bored. They ruined the website though what do you mean I have to watch an ad that I can't even watch because Chrome had to physically stop it from ruining my phone bruh

looking forward to: I have absolutely no idea.

I don't know who to pass this on to so I'll just leave this open to any mutuals who wanna do it and tag me idm <3

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live action mlp announced (joke inspired by @sigmasonicx but also the news is real)

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she's not technically hired yet but you get the idea

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Goshhhh I've had to take a break from drawing after my exhausting final project but here's something I did between pieces to restore my will to live.

Ghost and Jack yaaayyy

In the AU lore I'm writing, Ghost has quite a strained relationship with Jack at first, since the first time they met he accused her of murder (self-defence) then locked her in a cell-- plus everything John had told her about him. Obviously after being forced to talk to him quite often about her species, she begins to grow very fond of Jack and looks up to him quite a lot.

YOU FOOLS I DID IT AGAIN! I ROPED LEONARD COHEN INTO THIS SOMEHOW MWAHAHAHA

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Art styles- gotta catch em allll 🎶🎶

No litterally though why do i have so many.

Also interests. HELP. i have too many.

Anyway, heres my favourite omnisexual, Captain Jack Harkness, and uh, if you like this, check out some of my other art ^^

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Just made a whole ass PMV artfight attack cus I wanted to animate to Monster but I had no characters to fit so I basically stole someone else's lol