( Cut for Miracle Day spoilers. Is anyone still avoiding those? Very much a classic series question though. )

Nothing to do with the fic I'm writing, btw. (Dear Attention John Hart, you are not invited. This fic is annoying me enough without your help. Besides, you got yourself a cameo in last year's wintercompanion summer/holiday fest. No love, author.) Which I need to get back to. Just a random thought.

ETA: In other news, the 506 words I wrote last week? Are gone. Since when do I ever close a document without saving? Since when does Open Office not offer to recover something if the computer did a restart or something with an unsaved document open? Argh!!!!

Title: The Past is Like the Weather (it will come and it will go)
Author: lionessvalenti
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing/Rating: Jack/Ianto, PG-13
Summary: Jack and Ianto couldn't imagine a different life.
Why you should read this: So, I was in the mood for comfort fic last night, and as I went through my tabs, found this one that had been sitting open for a bit. It starts off as curtainfic, which is one of the things I will turn to for comfort fic. Yeah, it's unrealistic, but it's some of my favorite characters getting a happy life that canon would never let them have, and sometimes that's what I'm in the mood for. Then, and here's why you should read it even if you loathe curtainfic, it takes a sharp left turn, ties up a loose end from canon and in the process exposes a bit of logic-fail in canon, and resolves a bit angstily but yet still hopefully. Seriously, I do think you'll enjoy it even (perhaps especially) if you spend some of the first bit rolling your eyes at the unlikeliness of it all.

Title: The Wilde Job
Prompt: #13 - The objective of the Leverage team's latest caper turns out to be an alien artifact that Torchwood is after, so both groups join forces.
Summary: A Torchwood cold case becomes the Leverage team's new case. A con within a con ensues.
Word Count: ~2700
Pairings/Characters: Full Torchwood and Leverage teams with canon pairings/tensions, past Jack/historical figure, and a hint of past Jack/Sophie
Crossover With: Leverage
Rating/Warnings: PG13/None
Contains: Graphic abuse of series timelines and the odd bit of swearing.
A/N: Thanks to angela_snape and jooles34 for beta-reading on incredibly short notice. This went a bit afield of the original prompt, but I hope it serves and, in its timey-wimey way, still fits.

There's a ton of other great stories over there, crossovers with Sherlock, Primeval, Criminal Minds, The Adventures of Jules Verne, and probably others I've forgotten. Go, read, enjoy! Just, for anything rated higher than PG13, you'll have to join the comm, as those stories are locked.

Forgot to do this yesterday. There's certainly nowhere near as much in years past, partly due to nursing school and partly due to the 271K+ insanity that is The Fic That Wouldn't Stay Dead. But other stuff did get written!

• No Longer a Student (HP; Hermione, Snape, Lupin; G)


• Daftest Wizard Ever (HP; Hermione/Remus; G)


• Not Just a Joy Ride (DW; Amy/River; G)


• What Matters (HP; Snape/Lupin; G)


• Muted Joy (DW; River/Amy, Amy/Rory; G)


• Keep 'Em Guessing (DW; Nine/Rose/Jack; PG-13)


• Cold Certainty (TW; Ianto/Jack, Tosh; PG)


• The Way to a Man's Heart (BtVS; Dawn/Xander, Xander/Anya; G)


• Tingly (BtVS; Willow/Tara; PG)


• Flying on Ice (HP; Snape/Hermione; G)


• A River by Any Other Name Would Play a Different Song (DW; Jack, River; G)

Of course, compiling that reminded me that I missed the deadline to write something Snupiny for December for the Year of Snupin challenge. *sigh* I reminded myself more than once over the past week to do it, too. Damn.

Still trying to write a few more fandom_stocking stuffers, as the reveal isn't until the 6th, I think, so rather than keep track of what was 2010 and what was 2011, I'll just count it all as 2011.

For the most part, I've stuck to criticizing what I see as the flaws in CoE itself rather than RTD. There are a number of reasons for that, first and foremost being I had four years of "critique the work not the author" drilled into me during a previous round of college. Secondmost being I know firsthand that the story does wtf it wants sometimes, even when you don't want it to. Case in point, my snape_after_dh fic, His Soul, which was supposed to be a resurrection fic and ended up being not, or, for that matter, TFTWSD, which is loaded with elements that are almost guaranteed to piss people off, elements that I keep trying to write back out but can't seem to because the characters are too damned insistent. So, yeah, very clear on the whole "the story sometimes does wtf it wants" concept. Do I think that was the case for CoE? Not based on various interviews, but whatever. The story is what it is, and I still think it doesn't actually work, but again that comes back to critiquing the story itself.

The acceptance speech RTD had James Moran read at SFX, however, is not about the story at all. It strictly has to do with RTD, and it absolutely makes me see red.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Because there, at the very beginning, we have special needs jokes. Does anyone even think that's actually funny instead of crass and offensive? Kinda sets the tone for the whole thing.

Some of the stuff in the middle could be funny, maybe, if it made sense or we could figure out who he was supposedly talking to on his side of the phone conversation. Then we come to the end and all becomes clear. "You missed a bit, Gareth, over there, that's it, bend over."

Seriously? No, I mean, for real? You think this is humorous? Oh yes, I realize it harks back to one of Ianto's first lines ever. That does not, in this context, make it funny. Because you know what? GDL was apparently a very good sport when he came on stage to accept his own award just after this. (Not finding a link to his acceptance speech on SFX's site, just going by what folks who were there have said.) But that is harassment, sir. And if pointing that out makes me "hysterical," well, clearly I've already embraced the label.

I was already dubious about any S4 for TW, whether on the BBC or Fox*. Not because of Ianto specifically, but for the same reason I couldn't work up an interest in Dollhouse S2 after seeing "Epitaph 1": it felt too over-and-done-with. Now? This just left a really, really bad taste in my mouth. Way to go, RTD. You're actually pushing away fans who still had a foot somewhat in your corner.

*Can I also add that, for someone who's supposedly a Whedon fan, RTD seems utterly incapable of learning from JW's mistakes? Let's leave aside the parallel with Tara's death and the explosive reaction to it, because AfterElton.com already covered that pretty thoroughly. How can you be a Whedon fan and think shopping your sf show out to Fox can end anywhere but disasterland?

I'm watching the rest at work, and the laptop can't go online, so I'll just save the commentary on all the rest in the one Semagic file and post when I get home.

( Spoilers galore for ep3 )

Gods, I hope the audio's better on the remaining two. GDL, in particular, was very hard to make out at times in that one.

( Ep4 )
( Ep5 )

Now I suppose it's time to go see what all the fandom fuss has been about. I think I might just want to digest this all a bit more before doing that.

( Sunday afternoon thoughts on the show as a whole )

Given the overriding theme in this, I almost want to go with the VK icon "All true wealth is biological." But I use the Torchwood one rarely enough, so there it is.

So, I'm finally watching it, though I should really be sleeping right now, and I sort of want to jot down some of my thoughts as I go and before I read some of the meta/freakout/wank I've set aside to read once I've seen all 5 eps.

( Spoilerific for CoE1 )

And I still don't feel like I can fall back to sleep, so I guess it's on to ep2.