Creatures from the fic lagoon

[sholio]

Using a combination of Google and rec comms, I've been exploring Torchwood fic from ye olde internet, back in the 2007-2008-ish era of the original fandom. It's such a nostalgia trip. People rating fic R for language and including warnings about it. Multi-part fic posted across 5 or 10 LJ posts. Finding an absolutely brilliant little gem of a fic and then realizing that nothing in their journal is tagged, so you just have to look through every entry hoping you'll hit on something else relevant to your interests ...

The pre-AO3 days, y'all.

Other things I've found: so much Gwen-bashing. So much porn. Some familiar, half-forgotten LJ names from other fandoms. A surprising amount of love for Owen, who I remember being widely hated or at least unpopular when I fell head over heels for him and took my very brief 2008-era dip into the fandom. But the impression I'm getting now is that while a lot of people did dislike him or were at best neutral on him, a small corner of the fandom really loved him.

One thing that's been a little bit disconcerting about getting back into it after all these years is that the fandom pretty much loves the entire OG team equally now. It's nice. The early fandom feels much more brittle and divided, more ship-warry and just generally harsh.

Anyway, I'll do a recs post for what I've found soonish. I'm surprised how much of the fic is still online. I expected more dead links.

Comments

[such_heights]

This is such a nostalgia trip to read! I was so active in the fandom back in the day and it was a hot mess at times.

[sholio]

I didn't know until the past couple of weeks that you were ever in TW fandom! Yeah, I didn't really stay in it long enough to get to know people - it was probably one of my shortest fandom tours EVER because I got all caught up on the show and completely fell in love with it a few days before the season two finale. Then THAT happened and I ragequit. (I did come back for CoE and then noped the final nope. WHY WAS THAT SHOW LIKE THAT.)

But yeah, I'm finding it much less of a wanky hell pit on this go-around. It's weird diving back into these old comms and discovering the ragged edges of ship wars whose shippers have long since moved on to other things.

[lannamichaels]

Torchwood back in the day... I remember that I always heard that it was full of terrible fic and drama, but I'd apparently curated my own experience so much that I was only reading really great fic and thought the quality was so high.

btw, alas, the culture of the multi-part fic across many posts that isn't really tagged or linked to each other is still alive and well on tumblr, for reasons I don't fully understand, but late last week I found one that was 50+ parts.

[sholio]

but late last week I found one that was 50+ parts.

TUMBLR WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. AO3 IS RIGHT THERE

.... but yeah, I had noticed that Tumblr had resurrected a bunch of the old stylings of old-school LJ fandom, mostly by way of having noticed that Tumblr is mainly where I still do my old copy-paste method for saving fanfic in the extremely likely event that it'll just disappear.

It is downright weird getting back into a fandom that I was in 12(?!!) years ago with no intervening tapering-off period. I mean, there are things I'm still into or had a little surge of revival that I was into back then, but usually it's a thing where I dip in and out of it, and kind of always keep a hand in. Torchwood, though ... I haven't even really thought about it since I ragequit all those years ago. There were episodes I never even watched because I watched season two first, meant to catch up on season one, and then noped out because of canon happenings. And now, here I am back again with even stronger fandom feelings for it than the first time, all these years later.

[sheron]

I feel like most fandoms converge to the "love all characters" eventually once sufficient nostalgia kicks in.

[pauraque]

This has been my experience too. Partly nostalgia, and partly just the fact that maintaining the level of froth that fandoms can work themselves into when the canon is new just isn't sustainable over years/decades. It's too much energy to fight the same battles over and over.

[sholio]

Yeah, I agree! There are some exceptions, but usually it seems like fandoms tend to age gracefully into the sunset.

[sholio]

Yeah, I've noticed this too! Not EVERY fandom - there are some that manage to be wanky hell pits even years or decades later. But yeah, this seems to be a general trend. And it's definitely very much a thing here.

[cornerofmadness]

how cool. I've been on a few trips like that in the buffyverse. I have to say I'm with you on early fandom being ship-warry or at least much more than my current ones

[lokifan]

so much Gwen-bashing.

That's very much what I heard at the time, yeah! This is so nostalgic for me to read, omg.