Voice-over

Fanfiction
Title:	Voice-over
Author(s):	Elizabeth O'Shea
Date(s):	1999
Length:	26,500 words
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:	Voice-over
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Voice-over is a Bodie/Doyle story by Elizabeth O'Shea.

It was published in Roses and Lavender #3 and is online.

Summary

"Bodie is unconscious, and the doctor says Doyle's voice might serve as a path back to the waking world. So talk, the doctor orders Doyle - and Doyle talks. Gossip, complaints, scolding - Doyle says it all. And then he says some more."

Reactions and Reviews

I wish Elizabeth had the time to write more. This, her longest story, always makes me yearn for more. Bodie is in a coma and Doyle has been told it would do his partner good to hear a familiar voice. So, heartbroken and hoarse, Ray does his best to reach poor Bodie. He decides to remind Bodie of a trip they took to France, where each realized how they felt about the other. It's a magical journey Ray describes, filled with fog and salt air and deserted village streets. The section in the church is one of those scenes that has stuck with me vividly in the year plus since I first read this. And the simple, almost inevitable way the lads' relationship changes is just gorgeous. It's a marvelous story.

... my all time favourite fic is still "Voice Over" by Elizabeth O'Shea, where they're sweet as all get-out. She manages to avoid making them gaggingly sugar-y, but has you rooting for them all the way. Tempers it with hilarious real-life bumps and scrapes I guess. Perhaps part of the magic is that its like a holiday - people do act differently when they're away, so although I couldn't see B or D like this in London, it totally works in France

Bodie is in a coma, and Doyle of course is instructed to talk to him. Running out of things to say, he begins to reminisce about their first time. There is something magic about this story – and it’s all the more touching because it’s funny. Beautifully written, perfectly "the lads" and completely heart-wrenching in a hundred different ways. Classic Prosfic.

Most of the stories I'm reccing here [at Crack Van] are stories I've read countless times - the zines or printouts sit on the table by my bed (which is about to collapse under their weight), and I turn to them again and again. Tonight, though, I'm reccing a story that I read for the first time just today; it just appeared in Proslib (and now on the Circuit Archive).

Voice-over is a story within a story: Bodie lies in a coma, and Doyle is exhorted by the doctors to talk to him, "let him hear your voice." Doyle, though he feels a bit self-conscious about the whole thing, obeys, but after three days of telling witty anecdotes and reading the sports pages, he's run out of standard "happy" material. So he decides to talk about one of the best nights of his life: his and Bodie's first night "together." It's a story Bodie knows, obviously, but that doesn't stop Doyle, lucky for us, because oh, it's a killer of a story, sweet and moving and hilarious in its own way, filled with Ray's meandering asides about what was going on in his head at the time and what he's thinking and feeling now.

The entire story, then, consists of Doyle "talking" to Bodie. This is a difficult device to pull off well, but the author not only makes it work, she makes it work brilliantly. The flow and pacing are amazing; the asides and interjections and interruptions feel so natural and so real, as Ray bounces between fond nostalgia and a kind of desperate effort to stay positive and avoid despair in the face of Bodie's continuing unresponsiveness. The characterizations and voices - for both characters - are as close to perfect as I think I've ever read, the author captures their mannerisms and inflections and their trademark bantering taking-the-piss from each other so well it's almost uncanny. These are the lads I know and love so well, the Bodie and Doyle who live in my mind.

And the feeling ... this is a story that makes you feel. The story Ray relates is such a lovely depiction of the tentativeness and hopefulness of new love, of two men trying their best to maintain cool and macho fronts (they're guys, after all!) but pretty much failing, because they are just so irredeemably, undeniably in love. And though it's (sort of) a "first time" story that Ray recounts, the way they deal with how things go so almost humorously wrong that first night serves to illustrate that this is a bond that has its roots in something much deeper than surface attraction and romance. You can see that bond, and the depth of their feeling, in Ray's monologue; while the story of their first night is a happy tale, the telling of it paradoxically makes him all the more aware of what Bodie means to him and what he stands to lose. Again he attempts to keep up the CI5-agent front, but it's a bit of a half-hearted attempt, and you can so clearly see the depth of his emotions as he struggles not to give in to fear and hopelessness - the love in his voice, no matter what the actual words, shines through so clearly it makes you ache.

This is a gorgeous, heart-warming, masterfully-told story, by an author with great talent and skill. If your tastes are anything like mine, it'll make you weepy, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you smile, and it'll make you long for more.

YES!!

This has to be one of my all time favorite fanfics in any fandom. It is totally brilliant! The undercurrent of desparation that Ray is trying desparately to keep a lid on is so poignant. But there is a lot of humor here, too. Several times things have built up to a climax only to have the bubble burst by something funny or unexpected happening. Bodie's puckish sense of humor is well preserved, too.

This story is a keeper for me and I highly recommend it. I know that the author is too busy now to write Pros, but I hope some day she will be able to enrich the fandom with more of her wonderful stuff.

Wow. Incredible story, incredible recommendation!

To take us into this amazingly intimate space, to recreate Doyle's voice so perfectly, to ride the edge between humor, despair, past and present so effortlessly...this is a great great story.

I agree with JustaCat - the love they feel for each other is described with amazing beauty. The emotional connections as well as the physical descriptions just astonish me. From spiderwebs in Bodie's hair to Doyle's "sweet" smile, from guessing Bodie's dreams by his heartbeat to their "perfect teamwork" showing in the first kiss...lovely. I will never forget the "angel" - the scene runs through my mind in full color and power. Makes you fall deeply in love with them all over again.

What a wonderful, magical, incredible story!! I'm almost done with this batch of recs (and having a blast getting to know these guys through slash, but I think I need to move on to the dvds next. I'm sure I'm missing so many story details and want to be familiar with the source material) and have enjoyed all the stories you recommended, but this one is by far my favorite.

You know what it's like when you're watching gymnastics or figure skating and the athlete is skillfully performing these graceful moves that you know only look easy and are really impossible for 99.99% of us? And you're holding your breath hoping that they don't fall and are so relieved and happy when it's over and they nailed it? That's how I felt while reading Voice-over. I was giddy with delight, but through the whole thing I worried that somewhere she was going to (continuing with the sports theme) drop the ball because what she was doing was so difficult. But she was brilliant and made Doyle's monologue work beautifully all the way through! Gorgeous job and deserving of heaps of praise.

it'll make you weepy, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you smile, and it'll make you long for more.

Yes!! I'm off to write her now and have my fingers crossed that she's written more in this fandom. The love she has for these guys, or at least had in 1999, shines through and inspires me to find out more about them. And I definitely want to read more of her version of them.

Elizabeth O'Shea is an author I haven't heard of before - but oh my, am I glad I've read her story now! It's called "Voice-over", and it's a tour de force that combines moving hurt/comfort with a lovely - if slyly surprising - first-time story. It's all told through Doyle's voice as he talks to his unconscious partner. The doctors, desperate because Bodie isn't waking from a coma as he should, want him to hear a familiar voice, and Doyle provides that verbal stimulus, trying to make a bridge to lead his partner back to life. The story that unfolds takes us to France with them, through awakening feelings for each other, to funny moments and poignant ones and all sorts in between. There's a bit in a church about stained glass and an angel that knocked me out Bodie may be unconscious throughout, but he lives, as large as life and twice as smug, and just as charming and vibrant as we all know him, in the memories and anecdotes and stories which Doyle doggedly relates.

The last story in the zine is "Voice-over" by Elizabeth O'Shea, and all I can say is: read it or you'll be sorry. Honest It's a triumph, a tour de force. I mean, I could include all sorts of stuff about the technical achievement of the thing - how she tells a story which includes drama and brilliant scene- setting and wrenching depths of emotion, using only dialogue, god save the mark! - but you'll see that for yourselves when you read it And Pen's review has already told you about the set-up. No, all I want to say is that it made me laugh (a lot - she gets their banter spot on) and then it made me cry. Nice crying; the sort of lump-in-the-throat, isn't-it-lovely kind of snuffling you do when something works out absolutely right And she doesn't put a foot wrong when it comes to how they interact with one another. I frequently found myself nodding Yes, Yes! as the story unfolded in Doyle's unmistakeable voice. If I had to pick a favourite from this remarkable zine - and really, how do you choose between emeralds and sapphires? -- I suspect this would be it.

Voice-over by Elizabeth OShea was strongly recommended by Justacat on crack_van LJ community. I agree with her, this is a beautifully done story all from Doyle's pov because he is talking to Bodie, who lies unconscious in a hospital bed.

This was wonderful...I'm not a huge fan of first person narration, bec it's hard to keep the narrative voice convincing and real, but this is Doyle's narrative voice to perfection, the whole way through. She never misses a beat.

And yes, SO funny, SO witty and entertaining. And Bodie's character and voice is there too, clear as a bell.

Also, that first time encounter/kiss inside and outside the church? She keeps them both in character, and charges the whole thing with an amazing erotic tension.

I am so impressed with this.

O'Shea hasn't written huge amounts in Pros (that I'm aware of) but I think Voice-over is my favourite Prosfic of them all...

Voice Over - what can I say about the glorious Voice Over that I haven't said a thousand times before? Well, lots of you probably know it's my favourite Pros story of all time, but for those who are a bit newer to Pros in particular - and anyone who'd like a bit more detail about why - it's because...

...it's an absolutely beautiful read. *g* Okay, more detail than that...

I started taking notes as I re-read on the bus this morning, and within the first page or so I'd already half a page of reasons why I adored it so far. To sum up, it's a smooth, flowing read from start to finish, it's very much the lads as I see them, and it's filled with tiny details that make them so, so that I can see the author's own adoration of and passion for Bodie and Doyle in almost every word. This story is about passion, theirs', the author's and the reader's, because it's absolutely what I feel for the lads every step of the way. And on top of all that it's gorgeously atmospheric - I can feel the damp air, smell the ozone or iodine or whatever it is, mixed in with the dirty-stone smell of old buildings and wet pavement, and absolutely hear the hush that surrounded them as they stood by the harbour wall. I'm right there with them, and when I'm reading that's exactly where I want to be.

The story is written in Doyle's voice, as he sits by Bodie's hospital bed, following instructions to keep talking happy talk to him, and he's beautifully grumpy about this in just the way that I imagine him being. The idea of talking to a comatose loved one to bring them round is so cliched now, and it would be so easy for this to fail as a result, but O'Shea treats it so realistically that we're drawn in straight away. There's no heavy emotion, no explanation of why it's so important that Bodie wake up, instead Doyle is just as I'd expect him to be - he's uncomfortable talking out loud to Bodie with no feedback, but he's determined to do it because the medical staff have told him it might work, and he wants hope. He's also desperate for Bodie to come around, and we absolutely feel this in the way he tries to joke with him, the way he hears Bodie's responses, and jokes back again...

It's a poignant, forlorn hope that we're hearing - the sadness of playing ping-pong on your own - that Bodie will come back to him, but not uncomfortably so because Doyle is using it to buck himself up at the same time - he's not giving in to it, there are no angsty pledges of love, or talk of how Bodie mustn't leave him alone - instead he talks about the worry Bodie'd caused them all: Don't know why; should've remembered only the good die young. It's a perfect balance - enough that we know he's hurting, that we hurt with him, but not in the least falling into over-angsty.

Doyle isn't the perfect bedside visitor though, he's no square-chinned hero (god, I love that about our lads - not a square chin between them!), and he does nag at Bodie to wake up - lightly at first, but with increasing frustration through the night...

But even this is tempered, so that we feel the pain he's feeling even more...

Of course after several days of sitting by Bodie's bedside - poor, pale Bodie lying there, and we can see him too, we worry deep down, at the same time as Doyle worries, that he's not waking up - he's running out of things to talk about, particularly "happy" things...

So he starts to tell him a story, the story of you and me that first night, and we're transported just as magically as Bodie must be, to France, land of shadows and romance - but with our down-to-earth lads...

You can hear them, you can see them, and tiny moments like this keep us right with our canon-lads, no matter the exotic backdrop to it all. And we see Bodie as Doyle sees him - we store up snippets of Bodie's past, just as Doyle does - off down the docks with me little spotted hanky, and my favourite: Under the street lamps, tiny droplets of water had settled on your hair like a spiderweb hairnet. Oberon the fairy prince in a leather jacket and shoulder holster.

And we're right there as the lads come to the realisation that for the first time they're on their own, with time to kill, where no one knows them. They can do anything they want. And what they've known for a long time they wanted...

Oh, and it goes on from there, and I could go on and on, but I mustn't. Doyle's reminiscences are broken up by other thoughts and comments - as you do when you're talking to someone, telling a story - and their desire, and the way they both like to play at life, as much as work hard for it, is right there for us. Doyle is laughing at it all, as much as he's remembering it fondly, as much as he's using it to comfort himself, and the punch line is just perfect.

The more I think about it, the more I know again that this is my favourite Pros story.

I’ve always liked this. I like the idea of Doyle telling Bodie their own story as the way to talk about something positive, and retelling it in detail to give himself something to talk about. There’s the whole thing about how hard he’s finding it having Bodie unconscious and then how hard he’s finding it to talk. The sports pages have failed him, along with other gossip, so he resorts to themselves. The French experience starts off so erotic and the vision of Doyle as a stained glass angel is wonderful. The damp dark town is almost tangible. The bar, the landlady and the evening are so well described. Bodie’s illness (in the story within the story) is almost funny in its intensity and inappropriate timing. Doyle is so caring whilst semi-horrified and we feel so much sympathy for him as well as for his sick partner. And the suppository is a marvellous (and realistic) touch!! Then the end of one story (where we assume Bodie is better and that if they didn’t manage to have sex then they were going to soon) brings about Bodie’s return to consciousness in the 'main' story and Doyle’s flustered delight. Beautifully done, with Doyle’s voice almost eerily recreated. I love it.

The writing is assured. The whole thing flows beautifully. A monologue of this kind of length isn’t easy to sustain, especially when you have to ‘get’ a voice that all your readers will already recognise. And both the main story and the story within fall just short of too much angst, just short of over-sentimentality.

Two images force their way into my memories/subconscious from this fic - the lads in the foreign town at night, and Doyle watching Bodie in the hospital. They’re very powerfully created and will never leave me even if I forget the title of the story.

A much-loved story, one of my favourites among shorter pieces.

Its one of my favourite stories too. I love how Ray just talks and talks, trying to convince Bodie and himself that he will come back - not just to consciousness, but most importantly to him.

And I love Ray's response at the end when he does. Its like he can't believe it although he's been trying to convince himself all along that it will happen.

Its the ultimate happy ending.

Great story, great writing and much appreciated.

I think this is an incredible tour de force, keeping up the monologue for that long without dropping the pace, varying the pace convincingly, showing us beautifully how Doyle almost loses it from time to time but never quite does, when he breaks out of his thread and tells Bodie to bloody well wake up - you really feel the passing of time, follow Doyle's feelings throughout; the story-within-the-story is vivid and fun - I sometimes feel that EOS has attempted the impossible by going for a monologue that forces Doyle to tell Bodie what he himself did or said, but .... she does it so well that it works, she sets up the only situation that makes it plausible, she takes the risk and makes it work for her. (it's funny, on the face of it and before ever actually trying, you might fondly imagine that monologue would be relatively easy but of course it's probably one of the hardest things of all to bring off successfully - especially when the speaker is addressing someone who was there!).

Voice-Over is absolutely just really good writing as much as anything else, isn't it, and I think you're right about that sort of monologue not being easy to write, especially when you know your readers are going to be absolutely familar with the person you're trying to be. I can't think, offhand, of anyone who's brought it off better than EOS does here... *g*

I haven't read this excellent fic for a long time but one scene in particular still stays with me: Doyle standing in the light from the stained glass window in the church at night. Definitely one of the most memorable scenes in all Pros fic for me.

Adding to the chorus of approval, I loved this.

The scene where they start to touch and get a bit hot under the collar in the church is one of the most erotic things I've read, being in a church adding to the tension and temptation of it. Bodie is kind of masterful there (wibble), he seems to have taken control of the situation since he persuaded Doyle to enter the church.

Not that the whole story is like that - I like the way it goes back and forth. Later Doyle has to look after Bodie and get help for him, in a neat parallel with him sitting by the hospital bedside - no wonder that episode came to mind when he was trying to think of things to talk about. Until that point, I'd just thought he was happily nostalging about their first time.

The description of the stained glass window is indeed memorable. Doyle certainly has a Pre-Raphaelite look about him at times and it's great to see this explored.

Is it just another form of a Mills and Boon story? Is it just hopelessly romantic and predictable?

Voice Over - a romance novel? What makes it better or worse than a Mills and Boon story? And anyway – are Mills and Boon novels bad? I haven’t read one up until now (also no German equivalent), but of course I have my prejudices... Can I only enjoy Voice Over because there are Bodie and Doyle in it???

Is Voice Over (and all the other stories) - kitsch?

(And I think I know the first sentence of the first comment: “Well, it isn’t ‘War and Peace’, you know...)

Pardon me for being provocative! :-)

At the risk of jumping in head first - where angels fear to tread etc. - this fic in particular (and many of this type of fic) are way, way ahead of Mills&Boon stories. To begin with they show better writing techniques e.g. the sustained monologue, the metaphors, the story within a story, the inclusion of various genres (humour, angst, romance, etc.)This story is by no means formulaic - Mills&Boon writers are given a formula and strict rules to write to - yes, the occasional writer manages to rise above the formula but basically the publisher's admonitions are usually showing. All sorts of books are in fact romances and there was a delightful TV series here not so long ago looking at them and at the desire for them.

Jane Austen is Romance, George Eliot is Romance, Anthony Trollope is Romance. None of them can be compared with Mills&Boon because they have more subtlety, more social awareness and description, better characterisation, especially of minor characters (in Voiceover, think of the landlady, of the nurse, of the other agents mentioned). Nothing is a mere stereotype.

Georgette Heyer is Romance and could so easily be Mills&Boon but isn't because there is the underlying laughter. The same applies to some Terry Pratchett.

Romeo and Juliet is archetypal Romance. Mills&Boon it ain't.

I think the best fanfic compares well with some of our best original writing in that it is near-perfect within its genre. This particular story compares with a lot of published original short stories in technique and in the effect on the reader. It is intelligent, and lovingly, individually crafted. I would never say that Mills&Boon never achieve that, but it isn't what they strive for. Many run-of-the-mill fanfic writers merely achieve Mills&Boon-style competence. Voiceover is far, far better.

I've never read a Mills &Boon so can't judge on that. But I do think that 'Voice-Over' would work perfectly well as a short story with other characters (I've always liked short stories as a form, it has to be said). We might need a bit more introduction to the characters and their previous relationship, but I'm not sure how much more, really. The angel and stained glass window maybe wouldn't mean much if you didn't know Doyle, in particular Doyle in 'The Rack' *vbg* Fanfic authors certainly have the luxury of having the characters already mapped out - but that's another subject.

Oh I don't think this story is either hopelessly romantic or predictable, and as someone else has said I think it's of much better quality than the majority of formulaic Mills and Boon stories. We don't actually know whether Bodie is going to live or die, although perhaps we presume that the author wouldn't show us the joy of their first meeting only to dash us too cruelly at the end. But (again as someone else has said) there's an immense skill at work here in actually creating the Bodie and Doyle that we recognise and love (you can't just put their names to two characters, that doesn't work at all), and then creating out of that a well-written, beautifully paced, and unpredictable story.

Some fanfic is kitsch-y, certainly - and I think we each have our own opinions on what is and isn't! - and some is entirely passionless, and some is absolutely wonderful (like Voice-Over, and probably the majority falls somewhere in the middle. The people writing fanfic are the same people who write published novels (sometimes they really are those people!) - they're just not at the point in their lives where their aim is to be "professionally" published. Some will no doubt make it, some won't - the same balance as amongst the general population who write. But there were many authors now considered "classic" who had their stories turned down by publishers, originally, and others who were published only after their death. I hate pretntious books, written to be purposefully controversial and/or to win awards - I'll take alot of fanfic over that sort of published "critically-acclaimed" or "prize-winning" novel any day... *g* Another thing I don't like, though, is categorising any kind of story - once you do that you're setting up reasons for not trying to read something... You can read one story, but if you say "I don't read xxxx category" then you might well be missing out...

I especially don't want to categorise something like Voice-over, because I enjoy it ultimately for what it is, without any need for definition!

So you think that you can replace Bodie and Doyle by any two lovers in this story and you can still categorise the story as 'good'? As 'not just romantic kitsch and predictable'?

Yes, it would still be a good story. No, it wouldn't be just romantic kitsch or predictable.

But I think the fact that it's Bodie and Doyle adds something to the story for fans, all the in-jokes that we know and love, and so it would lose something if you took the lads out of it. It would still be a good story, but it would be a very different story.

Fic that's "had the serial numbers filed off" (ie, Prosfic that has had the names changed to make it "original fiction") doesn't usually work for me because of that, because we bring so much to fanfic as fans, through our innate knowledge of a show/characters. That knowledge and understanding is part of the fun of reading fanfic, and why it's a very different thing to reading "original fic". I don't it's really possible to compare the two things, at least on the same set of scales.

This good-sized story is a tour-de-force of narrative control, written entirely as a Doyle monologue as he recounts anecdotes and memories to an unconscious Bodie. Elizabeth O'Shea hasn't written many Pros stories, more's the pity; I very much enjoy her writing. I love her take on the characters, on their relationship, the fabric of the world she weaves around them, her smooth flowing sentences. I'm not generally fond of first-person narratives, but she does it well and the speaker sounds here like Doyle, not just a generic narrative voice pretending it's Doyle. And while Bodie is unconscious in the present timeline, he'll vibrantly alive as himself in the flashbacks Doyle relates.