Reaction post - Torchwood 3.2

[unfeathered]

Fucking hell! I was going to post a proper reaction post like yesterday but I'm afraid I can't get past Jack in fucking concrete. Concrete! Didn't they think burying him for 2000 years was enough???

Shit. My hands are actually shaking here. How are supposed to write someone who's been through something like that?????

...On the other hand, yay Ianto! *g*

Comments

[aeshna_uk]

If he's buried, unshielded (by, say, a coffin), in something heavy, it'll physically crush him to the point where his body is effectively in stasis. Bloody unpleasant way to die, but once he's dead, he won't come back until he's released and there's the space to fill it all back out again. So while I doubt he'll much enjoy the burials, so long as no coffins are involved, he'll be unaware of any passage of time until he comes back again.

Well, that's how I write it anyway. ;)

(and my, that was fun! Want to see what happens next! :D)

[unfeathered]

Okay. I'll... try and believe that, then. *shivers*

[aeshna_uk]

Well, it's not like he can come back too easily if he's been flat-packed.... ;)

[canaana.livejournal.com]

His body seems to expel foreign objects like bullets perfectly well. I guess I figured earth, concrete, etc. would fall in the same category. But I much prefer to believe your explanation.

[aeshna_uk]

But it's not just a question of expelling anything that gets inside. Every year here, there are deaths when some kid on summer holiday burrows into a sandbank and has it collapse on them. Even if rescuers can get a breathing tube in, the victim dies in the vast majority of cases because as they breath out, the chest volume decreases and the sand rushes in to fill the small void around the body until they can't physically pull air in any more. And that's not taking into account any broken bones or the like. The human body is soft and squishy and doesn't take well to large weights in any number of ways!

In Jack's case, his deaths are temporary things, but he doesn't "wake up" until a certain amount of repair work has been done - there is a physical threshold, even if it doesn't wait until he's perfectly reformed. Several tons of liquid rock should crush the chest to the point where that threshold isn't going to be reached until he's released... all he can hope is that it's his team that that gets him out, and not some startled future palaeontologist.... ;)

[unfeathered]

That makes a lot of sense. *nods*

So would that have been the same when Gray buried him? Would the earth that was on top of him have been heavy enough? Not as heavy as concrete, I guess?

[aeshna_uk]

Oh, six feet of earth would most definitely do the job - ever lifted a bucket full of damp soil? And over time, more earth would pile on top of him. If Gray had wanted him to really suffer, he should have put him in a box first (but then, Gray wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders there!)....

(Have actually used this whole scenario in fic before now. :))

[canaana.livejournal.com]

That definitely makes me feel better.

[canaana.livejournal.com]

Oh gods, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's physically shaking.

Alternately, one of my preferred explanations has been that Jack Harkness is now a condition of the universe (as opposed to "alive" being a condition of Jack Harkness). If he were insane, he would not be Jack Harkness at some fundamental level. So if his mind is in that kind of danger . . . again you effectively get stasis until there's some change in condition. I hope.

I'm at least encouraged that he was dead when they broke him out. (Wow, that sounds strange). Given how long it'd take to suffocate and how quickly he'd come back from so little physical damage, it seems to imply that he stayed dead the whole time.

[unfeathered]

Oh gods, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's physically shaking.

Me too!

And yes, I think your explanation of his sanity is about the only way to go. Of course, the *real* explanation is that the writers don't seem to want to deal with the emotional/mental effect of all they've heaped on poor old Jack (sometimes literally) - which is weird, really, when what they're going for is drama.

[canaana.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I don't demand good science be involved, but I *do* think they get so wrapped up in his being immortal that they sometimes forget he's still human.

Though, in the clear light of day, CoE2 is probably one of the few times I think what they did to him, horrible as it was, was completely well-plotted and not remotely gratuitous.