Know how sometimes you really really want there to be a story of a particular idea/relationship/plot, and when there isn't one you write one yourself, only because it's you who's written it, you can't get the same enjoyment out of it than you would have if someone else had?

Well, you guys, PODFIC. I love podfic. In general, but of my own stories too, because, BECAUSE, when I listen to podfic of my stories, somehow it's like hearing the story for the first time, as if I haven't written it. And so, considering all I've said in the paragraph above, it is AWESOME.

What I'm getting around to say is that diane_mckay has recorded Golden Ratio, one of my favourite Jack/Ianto fixit stories, and one that so very fits the bill of "I'd really love to read this... oh well, I'll write it".

When I write, the words coming out of me tend to have the same cadence of dialogue, so it is especially refreshing and exciting to hear how other people are reading it - the different tones and emphasis and pacing they place on it. I think my glee over hearing my own stories podficced is half in madly loving readers for infusing my stories with more meaning, and madly loving the story itself all over again for turning up these different themes and interpretations.

Basically, it's awesome.

Thank you, diane_mckay!

I wasn't going to do this, seeing as I wrote practically nothing last year, but then it turns out I wrote a lot in January! And would be breaking a 5-year tradition if I didn't do this. So, here we go.

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I have a stack of unpublished Torchwood snippets and bits of WIPs that are going to languish forever, now. Should I publish them somewhere? As various chapters on AO3, perhaps? Or on this journal? Eh, I don't know, I think the Torchwood-on-my-flist boat has sailed, now, so it's possibly not even worth it. Still, leaving them completely unknown makes me twitch a bit. (As does the thought of publishing something dodgy and unfinished, so eh.)

First of all, the brilliant missyjack is running a fannish event for Melbourne Fringe Festival - Fan Tales* - it's being held at the awesomely classy and intimate Hares & Hyenas queer bookshop, and will essentially be a bunch of fans talking about and reading their fanfiction. I'm planning on talking about fannish response to Torchwood, CoE in particular, and reading some of one of my fixit fics.

So, if you're a Melbournian fan, come and read! Or come and listen! Tickets are only $15, $10 concession or $10 each for a group of 4+, which is good value, I reckon. I think it'll be a fun evening. If you're interested in reading, there are still a couple of slots left - drop me a line, or talk to missyjack. (You can show/talk about vids and/or fanart too/instead, if you want!)


In other Torchwood fic news:

• Composite and Underwood have been nommed for Children of Time Awards. Thankyou, anon nommer!


• Goodbye Dolly has been included in an epub volume of Jack/Ianto fanfiction compiled by lefaym.

* Which may or may not be streamed live - I would kind of prefer to record my own talk and podcast it later, rather than having invisible!audience!

I began writing this story in April 2009. Since the beginning, the synopsis has been:

The AU where Ianto still brings Lisa to Torchwood Three, but manages to save her - get her out of the conversion unit and rehabilitated - but of course, that’s not the end of it. Lisa is damaged, physically and emotionally, and considering they’ve gone AWOL from Torchwood, they have to run. But of course, Jack tracks them down, and offers them jobs at TW3. They accept.

I've now decided to give up on completing it - but have around 10,000 words of material for it. Waste not, want not! I shall share it here.

( introduction )

( the unfinished work, with commentary )

Thank you for the prompts, droll! I hope to tackle some of them in the next couple of weeks (and beyond!) :D

Meanwhile, I've been trying to come up with content to post publicly that doesn't require me to stay awake an extra seven hours (and be inspired, to boot). So, hopefully this is something I can just gleefully ramble about for a while!

Usually I'm reluctant to share story ideas before actual stories in case of a) ruining the punchline or b) diffusing the magic, but considering I think I'm burning out of Torchwood, I might as well get some bang out of these, seeing as most won't ever see the light of day otherwise.


(Torchwood) Stories I'm Totally Going To Write, As Soon As I Can Afford To Spend All My Time Writing Fanfiction

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Wow, I wish I had the time and energy to write all of those. *longsuffering sigh*

Title: Goodbye Dolly
Author: Hope (angstslashhope, hope)
Fandom: Torchwood
Wordcount: ~2,000
Genre: PWP
Rating: NC-17
Characters(s): Jack/Ianto
Notes: for amand_r’s help_haiti bid. (You asked for "humour", and I must sheepishly admit that I'm not sure this fits the bill, but it's the closest I could manage right now. Hope it's OK!). TYVM to rexluscus for beta.

Summary: Hotel rooms have a way of aiding nostalgia.

Read on the AO3.

so, there's this:



for The Secretary.

Thanks!!

Naturally, I was the schmuck who signed up to post in the first week of tw_kinkandseek. The kink I chose was "multiple partners".

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FREAKING MULTIPLE PARTNERS FICS THERE ARE IN TORCHWOOD FANDOM?

A lot. Last weekend I went through a million tags and communities and genrefinders and kink battle posts and bookmarked a massive swath of them. Then, this evening, I went through each one and listed it, with relevant details, on my kink and seek post.

ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN STORIES, PEOPLE. And that's with me being too tired/lazy to itemise everything in the threesome-themed pornbattle.

*collapse*

I have been working with curriejean on setting up tw_kinkandseek, a community for collecting and collating Torchwood fic by KINK.

The way it works is that you claim a kink you like, then go out and hunt down all the stories with it you can find, perhaps pulling out a few to rec as your favourites.

Then you post to the community in the timeslot you also claimed (so hopefully, it'll keep trundling on for a while instead of fizzling), the post gets tagged and each story you link to gets bookmarked in the kinkandseek delicious account, too.

Find out more about what it's all about, or just go ahead and claim a kink now :D

I want this to work! It'll be super-cool! Come and play!




In other news, Transformative Works and Cultures [journal] have just released their Supernatural issue! Even not being in the fandom any more, I've had a poke around and enjoyed a bunch of the articles now. It's super-solid. And you also get to read this awesome interview with me & my fellow Supernatural Wiki admins.

It was funny doing that, because Deb totally came to it like, "so, tell me about how you handle the CONFLICT of managing a wiki!" and we were like, "conflict? what conflict? this is UTOPIA!" ♥Super-wiki♥

This plot:

1. Ianto is sick/hurt.

2. Jack and Owen care for him! Owen is gruff but protective, Jack is concerned and tender.

3. Tosh is mousy and Gwen is insensitive, but in about 50% of stories, you never know this because...

4. Tosh and Gwen are relegated to being [quote]"the girls"[/unquote], who invariably are dispatched to do Ianto's shopping for him.

(4a. If it's a gen story in particular, SOMETIMES you get a POV shift to "the girls" where somewhere on the astral plane, Alison Bechdel is weeping while Tosh tells Gwen to stop being insensitive about Ianto because he and Jack are IN LOVE OMG GWEN HOW COULD YOU NOT SEE IT?)


SRSLY. How many stories?

... I sort of feel like making a flow chart of dodgy TW fic cliches. Would that be bear poking? (Is making this a post public bear poking?)

Since the start of Feb, cupidsbow has been writing stories and meta and all kinds of shiny things, and damn, I wish I could have played (though I did squeeze that Suzie story out), but a new job and shaky housing situation has taken up all my mental energy, alas.

However. In poking through my "ideas for stories" docs in mind of writing something humourous for amand_r's help_haiti prompt, I came across this storytime exchange between Cathy and I that made me cackle in glee.

It's short but sweet. ( Read more... )

Happy Valentine's Day!

Title: Composite
Author: Hope (angstslashhope@LJ, hope@Dth)
Fandom: Torchwood
Wordcount: ~4,400
Genre: Character study, pre-series
Rating: Mature
Characters(s): Suzie, Jack, Ianto (Suzie/Jack, Jack/Ianto)
Warnings: sex & violence, snuff, necrophilia
Notes: written for james, who secured my services in a help_haiti lightning round. TYVM to betas cupidsbow and rexluscus! PS Don’t let the necrophilia warning put you off, there’s only about a line of it.

Summary: The prompt was “I would love to see some Ianto and Susie interaction. Er, before Susie is dead and all. I'm fond of the idea that she knows *something* is up, that Ianto is hiding something, even if she hasn't a clue what.”

Read on the AO3.

To the folk(s) who nominated We Happy Few and The Secretary for Children of Time awards - thank you!

Title: Underwood
Author: Hope (angstslashhope@LJ, hope@Dth)
Fandom: Torchwood
Wordcount: ~6,400
Genre: Desk porn, PWP
Rating: NC-17
Characters(s): Jack/Ianto
Notes: Massive thanks to james and rexluscus for beta help. (Also, whoa, I started writing this 5 months ago. O.O)

Summary: Pornography and paperwork.

Read on the AO3.

I've created a Collection for Torchwood fixits on the Archive of Our Own.

And by "fixit" in this case, I mean stories wherein killed-off Torchwood characters aren't so dead after all.

Here's the blurb for the Collection:

Whether you want to save Ianto Jones, re-write the fates of Owen and Toshiko, redeem Rupesh or go back as far as rescuing Lisa, this collection covers it all.

The definition of a "fixit" is relatively broad; you don't have to 'fix' a canonical character death by reversing it, you can write a alternate universe where it never happened.

Generally, however, fixits continue on with other canonical details, rather than branching into alternate storylines entirely (for example; Tosh and Owen live to see the events of CoE, Suzie lives to see the events of season 2, and so on). The exception is, of course, when fixits are written with no new canon to go on (e.g. bringing back Ianto), and it's perfectly acceptable to go off on your own conjecture.

Basically, if you're unhappy with the killing off of characters in Torchwood, and have created a universe where it isn't so, share it here.

(Re: that second-last para - is that how other people see these kinds of fixits too?)

Now, I am tempted to leave this a few days before posting to ao3_collections, as at present, I am the only one there who's promo'd a collection so far *g*

But, Torchwood fen on the AO3 who have written this sort of story, please add!

Title: Lucky Number
Author: Hope (angstslashhope@LJ, hope@Dth)
Fandom: Torchwood
Wordcount: ~18,000
Genre: Timey-wimey AU, porn.
Rating: NC-17
Characters(s): Jack/Ianto/Gwen
Warnings: Kinks: (highlight to be spoiled) Voyeurism, pegging, somnophilia, object penetration, double penetration, exhibitionism …and several others that probably don’t deserve flagging here.
Notes: Written for unstealthy in the mistletw seasonal promptathon. And zomg, made a billion times better through the tireless beta of cupidsbow, and thanks also to rexluscus for providing the final OK.

Summary: It’s not just like Christmas every day, it is Christmas every day.

Read in its entirety on the AO3

Though each work was posted on both Dreamwidth and LJ, I'm linking to the LJ posts as they automatically have links to the corresponding Dth entry in their footers :)

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This was so much fun. I think I spoke enough about the kind of stuff I wanted to play with in my initial post about the project, and can happily say that I achieved that. On reflection, though, I got a lot more out of it than I anticipated - I suppose I had thought of the project as something to showcase ideas, but what it did more than anything was develop and create new ideas and realisations for *me*, about these characters, about storytelling, about what cliche is and how it works.

Also, I totally realised that I can *do* this, I can still produce fic, I can still produce *good* fic, and I can do it to a deadline. And prolifically. Over 20,000 words in 12 days. I am feeling inspired again! I have added more to my WIPs, too!

It also shifted the focus for me on what's important about writing and publishing fic. So much of the value in that for me in 2009 was having something to be passionate about, a touchstone I could rely on for happy feelings. It was also about connecting with other people, having a community. In being blocked for months after being prolific for months, I think I lost a lot of that, and it had been dragging me down a lot. But this project has taught me a couple of things: 1) cupidsbow and I are an awesome team and can enable and cheerlead each other until the cows come home, and 2) the reward of releasing an idea out into the wild has started to outweigh the reward of other people acknowledging that I've had an idea.

So. Here's to 2010, and having many brilliant ideas, and exploring them thoroughly, and continuing the glee! I hope everyone who has been following us along for the past 12 days have enjoyed themselves as much as we have :D