Arctic Light

Cleaning out tabs here ...

Fanfic

Any Other Day by Amand_r (Torchwood, team with Gwen/Jack & canon pairings, 84K)
Gwen and Jack bodyswap fic. This is from 2011 and there is a scattering of gender stuff that feels dated now (not ill-intentioned, just ... things you'd see in a 2011 fic with a man and woman swapping bodies that you probably wouldn't see now), as well as some perhaps mildly questionable consent, but, I mean, it's Torchwood. Anyway, I really loved it otherwise; the plot is excellent (and very Torchwood) and there's lots of great character stuff, including some surprisingly sweet Owen & Ianto friendship in the background, and just some good Owen bits, generally. Everyone is very sympathetic and gets a lot to do. I really enjoyed it.

Too Good to Be True by BricklingGhost (Torchwood, team, Gwen POV, 3200 wds)
Gwen gets her team back, or does she? A painful-sweet post-canon fic focused on Gwen's reactions to getting back her dead teammates as part of an alien plot.

A Reaction, a Repudiation, a True Act of Self-Creation by Secret_Pizza_Party (Hell's Library, team, 3800 wds)
There is exactly one fic for these books on AO3 but ... it's so good! Set after book 2, with abundant spoilers, and great character voices and insights as everyone settles into their new normal. The details are so well-drawn that I keep slipping up and forgetting that some of this isn't from the actual books.

Non-Fandom

How to Make a Horse a Friend (youtube video)
Cowboy dude teaching a young horse to be ridden. This is almost magical, with no animal cruelty, at least as far as I can see. It was very soothing to watch.

A really interesting article on the late 1800s/early 1900s tamale fad, which I didn't even know about. It's specifically about Alaska but there's a lot of general historical context too. Might be paywalled.

The Chicken House by Jenny Fried (on Strange Horizons). Lovely, bloody, horror-tinted fairy-tale-esque short story. It's about gender dysphoria, in an emotionally messy way that really worked for me, though obviously YMMV.

A very brief recs post for tab-closing purposes!

Fanvid:

Odds Are by nestra (Schitt's Creek)
A fun and delightful vid with lots of show feelings!

Fanfic:

Anaander Mianaai Bites The Dust: Reaction Compilation (Imperial Radch, various, 4200 wds)
Less cracky and more insightful than the title suggests, it's a series of outside POV reactions to footage of Anaander Mianaai's death from various extremely-minor side characters. These range from hilarious (terrible machine-translated dialogue of the very serious climax!) to heartbreaking (descendant relatives of Breq's body recognizing her from pictures of their ancestors), and all are really well-done slices of future sci-fi life.

Archive-locked, so you'll need to be logged in to read it.

vay-gay-tion (Torchwood, Martha/Tosh plus team, 2800 wds)
Also better than the title suggests, a sweet post-Exit-Wounds Everybody Lives fixit with extra bonus Martha, in which the team gets a well-earned vacation to a resort planet where no one is trying to kill them for a change.

By the way, Chocolate Box signups are open!

Over the last month or so, I've racked up a collection of things to rec and keep not posting them, so since I'm not sleepy yet and it's still almost Thursday, I'll collect a few of those here. Also, so it doesn't get buried since I've posted a bunch of stuff lately, don't miss my Yuletide reveals post and also end-of-year fics. I post nothing for ages and then drop a bunch of fic on people, it's how I roll ...


Recs - The Expanse

Six vids! The first two, I'm fairly sure, have seasons 1-2 footage only, and the top one is not really spoilery at all. The rest are spoilery as hell for seasons 3-4.

( 6 Expanse vids )


Recs - Torchwood

10 recent fics! All are season 1-2 era team, i.e. the Owen & Tosh-enabled team.

( 10 Torchwood fics )

Trick or Treat and Shipoween are both open for browsing! (In Trick or Treat you select characters; in Shipoween you select ships.) I only officially signed up for Trick or Treat, but I have fic in both. Spot them if you can. I've only just begun looking through both fests, but there are lots of excellent offerings, including a lot of art!

And I got a lovely Trick or Treat gift: Halloween Parade, a lovely little slice of Defenders-flavored Halloween featuring Misty & Colleen.

--

Torchwood had a Halloween fest this month - collection here - so here are some recs from that:

The Zagrith's Claw by AVAAntares
Creepy and very Torchwood-feeling monkey's-paw-esque plot with a great team dynamic. (Graphic gore.)

Empty, Unseen, and Preyed Upon by engagemythrusters
Ianto is bitten by a werewolf; this is monster-werewolves instead of pack-bonding werewolves. Fun creature fic. (The fic itself isn't actually sad, but there's a flash-forward to post-Exit Wounds at the end, just FYI.)

Echoing by Beleriandings
A chilling and excellent ghost story. (Character death warnings.)

Fancy Dress by Paycheckgurl
For a lighter chaser to the above, a team fic with Halloween dress-up.

But there's other good stuff in the collection - it's worth checking out!

Not part of the fest, but perhaps worth mentioning because I don't think I linked to it specifically outside of the promptfic fest - I wrote a Torchwood werewolf pack fic back in September.

Can you tell I'm avoiding my novel edits here

Recent fandom fortunes have been good to me, and there have been a couple of really excellent Owen-centric fics posted on AO3 lately, in addition to my delightful AU-Ex gift!

Half-lives by Beleriandings (6700 wds, Jack & Owen & OCs, character deaths)
This is an absolutely gorgeous canon-compliant futurefic, one part Doctor-Who-esque scifi and one part ghost/haunting fic. Who knows how the energy that animates Owen really works, anyway, or whether it could sustain him beyond the destruction of his physical body? This has a really lovely old-school-scifi feeling, and it hurts, but in the best way. I've seen various fics out there that find ways of making Ianto immortal, but I think this is the first one that I've seen do it for Owen, and the result is lovely.

For I Chose the World's Sad Roses by moonlightrhosyn (5K, Owen + team)
The frame story for this teamfic is the alien plant greenhouse in the Hub, and Owen's reluctant custodianship of it, as it slowly becomes both a symbol of his integration into his friends' lives and a vehicle for taking care of their emotional wellbeing. A sympathetic look at all of the characters through two seasons, as well as the empathetic doctor side of Owen.

I meant to post these on Thursday, but, uh. Didn't. Oops. Some things I've enjoyed lately:

Torchwood

Stone Cold Admission (team gen, 7200 wds)
An artifact reveals the team's deepest traumas. I really enjoyed this - lots of character insight and worry for each other.

Secrets (900 wds)
In which Torchwood continues to be the worst-kept secret in Cardiff: four vignettes in which everyone else in Cardiff CLEARLY knows what's going on.

A Soul in Twain (1400 wds, daemon AU)
Vignettes of various characters and their daemons, including many of the minor ones.


Iron Fist

a shade of blue and a signal fire (post-canon, 3400 wds, f!Ward/Danny)
For Rule 63 Exchange, deftly characterized post-canon adventures and get-together fic with an always-female Ward.

Art for me for Daredevil/Defenders Exchange!
Hurt/comforty marker art of Ward and Danny (post-canon) for me in Daredevil/Defenders exchange. Babies!!

Previous Torchwood recs: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

My Torchwood icons are expanding: a bad sign. I got this one from cowboyhd; there are a bunch of Torchwood and DW icons at their icons tag. (The preview files are watermarked; open the image in a new tab first, and then download to get the non-watermarked one.)

Anyway, here are some recs from my fanfic dumpster diving on LJ and other old sites. In some cases I found the fic on LJ or ff.net and then was able to dig up an AO3 link for it.

25 recs from (mostly) LJ, plus a few recs/fic comms. I've been typically searching for fic with an emphasis on Owen and/or general team and friendship fic, so there's plenty of good fic out there that just doesn't fit my current search parameters; I recommend checking out the recs comms at the end if you're looking for more. Most of the writers recced here also have more fic on their LJs, so you might want to go ahead and check out their fic/fandom/character tags if you find something here that you like!

These recs are categorized as general fic, apocalypses, and porn, which tells you a lot about what Torchwood fic is like. (Not included: the category of Torchwood fic in which all the characters are terrible people being awful to each other, which makes up a large proportion of the fic, especially in season one.)

( 25 recs under the cut )

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Some general fics from the season one/two era, and a piece of meta.

( 9 fics and 1 piece of meta under the cut )

Also, I recced Dancing in the Midnight Garden in a previous post (really good AU version of season one in which Gwen is an immortal faery) but after I left the author some comments, they're now updating it again, so there are new stories to read!

Part One is here.

Expect several more of these posts; I've been reading a lot of Torchwood and bookmarking a bunch of it to rec, but never actually writing up any recs posts. So here's a smattering of not especially themed recs. Pretty much everything is season 1 & 2.

Torchwood fic

Snowdon by rivier
In the aftermath of season one's finale, Ianto tries to walk away, and Owen goes after him. Really lovely, detail-rich relationship-building; the fic is tagged Ianto/Owen but it's really more gen friendship with a lightly flirty vibe. I didn't realize 'til reading the author's notes that this was actually written just after season one, because the author does a fantastic job of anticipating the softer, more caring Owen from season two.

Does Africa Know A Song Of Me? by etmuse
Epistolary fic told in the form of letters exchanged between the team while Jack and Ianto are on location investigating alien shenanigans in Namibia. Set around mid-season-two but very slightly AU. Really fun banter and character interactions, with snark and friendship and a touch of h/c. Also, Martha. <3

Dancing in the Midnight Garden by Fionn_Sgeul
This is a really unusual and well-written AU of the first episode of season one, in which Gwen is actually an immortal being pretending to be human. I'm generally not fond of season rewrites that retread the plot of canon, so I loved this because it's not that; it's much more like an original episode than a do-over of 1x01, with a completely different plot, and Gwen is also a very different character, recognizably Gwen-like but also believably enigmatic and inhuman. It's full of clever and fun details, and different-from-canon interactions between the team and Gwen. This is the start of a series, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

Aftermath and In Between Days by Squash
These are two really lovely Owen-Ianto friendship fics, the first a series of emotionally hurt/comforty aftermath scenes from episodes from Cyberwoman through the end of season two; the second is a series of snippets after Owen's death. Both involve his canonical perma-death, so they're somewhat heartrending, but full of lovely relationship-building details as the two of them slowly evolve from prickly co-workers to close friends.

In general, I recommend checking out the rest of Squash's Torchwood fic if you like Owen-centric fic, and Owen & Ianto friendship; they really like writing both of these things. There is a caveat, however, which is that this author also doesn't shy away from dark and depressing subject matter, and some of it (though not, imho, the above-recced stories) is bleak.

Other fic of theirs I particularly liked: Hang On To The Thought Of Me (Ianto tells Maggie - the suicidal woman from "A Day in the Death" - about Owen's death post-2x13) and So We Wonder What Peace Of Mind Could Be Like (Owen & Ianto huddling for warmth). Their longest fic, In Losing What I Am, I Become Who We Are is plotty horror, very well written, with good team moments and probably THE MOST depressing ending I have ever read in any fanfic ever; "rocks fall, everyone dies" would have been positively cheery compared to what actually happens.

Beggars would ride and Mistaken for Home by Amand_r
Two gently sweet, well written, and ultimately heartbreaking team fics taking place from early season one to after the character deaths in season two, the first about a "birthday machine" that celebrates the team members' birthdays (and gets increasingly wrenching over time) and the second about an afghan that Gwen brings into the Hub when she's first hired.

I also generally recommend looking through the rest of Amand_r's Torchwood fic, though it is highly diverse in subject matter (they write a bunch of pairings and kinks), but there is a lot of it featuring a wide variety of different characters.

Vids, general

Human or Dancer by LilMissLola (Torchwood, Owen character study; link goes to Youtube)
This is from 2009 and the quality isn't that great, but it so completely hits the notes that I want from a vid study of Owen's post-undeath afterlife. I particularly love the way that his relationships with his teammates are showcased in this.

Burn Burn Burn by BeatriceEagle (A:TLA, Zuko character study; AO3 link)
A lovely Zuko character study to a really beautiful female-vocalist cover of the Johnny Cash song "Ring of Fire."

We Didn't Start the Fire by beccatoria (A:TLA & Legend of Korra, DW link)
A fun, fast-paced vid with clips from both shows.

Look at that, I still have a Torchwood icon!

My sister is watching Torchwood for the first time and invited me to (long-distance) join her in a rewatch. We are currently up to 2x07, "Dead Man Walking," and I have fallen HARD into a waiting pit trap of feelings (with rusty spikes at the bottom). I had a very hard falling out with this show when they started killing off characters left and right, and haven't watched a single minute of it since Children of Earth, but now I'm remembering how much I loved this dumbass show and its sweetly earnest team dynamics back in the day. I don't expect this to be a long-term fandom for me, but it's a fun little nostalgic flirtation.

I've also gone poking around for fic, which I haven't read since 2008-ish (the pre-AO3 days!) and found some really good stuff. This is one of those fandoms where I'm out of step with most of what people are writing about; I enjoy everyone and all the canon pairings on the show, but ficwise my heart belongs to the Owen-Tosh-Ianto triad, and there is not really much there. However, some of what I found is really amazing.

Fic

Two of Us Are Hung From the Same Twisted Rope by ShastaFirecracker (15K, late season 2)
Alien tech leaves Ianto and Owen stuck in one body. This is probably hands down the best bodswap/body-sharing fic I have ever read. It's hilarious and heartbreaking and fantastically well written, Ianto and Owen are perfectly themselves, and the rest of the team is great too. The Jack/Ianto is also super sweet here. Seriously, I cannot rec this enough; I stayed up way too late last night reading it.

Welcome to Anger Management by engagemythrusters (2300 words, late season two)
Owen drags Ianto out for a drink ... well, Ianto drinks, Owen complains about not being able to drink. It's prickly and angry and sweet, and really nails their dynamic at its best.

Foreign Languages by starfishstar (500 words, pre-series to season 1-ish)
A series of drabbles about Jack getting to know the team through different languages. Insightful and nicely characterized.

Walking Wounded by cold_feets (5300 words, between seasons, Ianto/Owen, unfinished WIP)
So technically this is a never-finished WIP, so yeah. But the style is such that I'm not sure whether you ever could really tack an ending on; it's a series of vignettes about Ianto and Owen getting to know each other and comforting each other and kind of developing a fuckbuddy sort of thing after Jack leaves at the end of season one. And I love the pairing and there's really not much fic for it. (Yeah, so I could read the canon M/M juggernaut pairing that everyone loves and there are a squizillion fics for, or how about I go looking this almost nonexistent rarepair instead!).

Inappropriate Workplace Conversations by ShastaFirecracker (2500 words, early season 2)
Cute bantery teamfic in which the team speculates about Jack's prowess in bed, and Ianto refuses to confirm or deny allegations. Some sweet, hot Jack/Ianto at the end.

Trundling on by Cmdr_Spadge (1200 wds, season one-ish)
Slightly AU-ish; Owen and Ianto develop a grudging friendship in season one.

Vids

Home by winter_jasmine
Gorgeous Tosh character study.

Affirmation by Butterfly
An upbeat, fun Doctor Who/Torchwood vid from back in 2008.

Life Is A Song by catnap332
A sweet/sad vid about the team's journey in seasons 1 & 2.

The Pioneers by giandujakiss
Nice team vid.