If I'm chatty it's because my husband is talking to the computer instead of me

[jadesfire]

To be fair, J is actually rehearsing a presentation for a job interview tomorrow, but it doesn't change the fact that the screen's the one getting talked to, not me.

Flushed with soup-making success this evening (easiest thing I've made in WEEKS and utterly nom-worthy), I decided to flick through the flist before washing up, and was reminded of reel_torchwood. I totally, totally, honest to goodness don't have time to write a Torchwood version of a film. But. One of the things I have sometimes felt Torchwood is lacking is 'whole world' AUs. There are lots of fix-it/fork in the road stories, but not so many putting them in totally different situations. Admittedly I went straight from Torchwood to SGA, which breeds AUs like horny bunnies, but still. I decided I would be looking forward to the fics from here, and that I would have a look at the list of prompts, just to see who was writing what (yes, Chrys, I know about yours ;)).

It was all going so well.

Seriously, I am NOT going to write a Cabaret, with Jack as Sally and Gwen as Brian. Ianto is not the MC, definitely not, Owen is not Max and Tosh is not Natalia.

I'm not writing this *whimpers*

Comments

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I'm not writing this *whimpers*

Yep, you keep telling yourself that. *nods* I believe you. Really I do.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I'M ONLY WRITING IT IN MY HEAD. *sigh*

So. Doomed.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Murray fights off your doom with chocolate!

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

not sure whether to give you a carrot for your plot bunny or a link to my 'canon' TW AU (based in Pete's world - 130,000 words to keep you busy - 2/3rds posted) - yes, shameless self pimp

and I'm doing 50 First Dates... and yep, sorry, but Ianto is the girl :D

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Heh, I barely have enough time to read the stuff I have to for work right now - maybe at Christmas! ;)

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

ah well, it was worth a try - here's a carrot for you bunny :D

[aeshna_uk]

I saw that challenge but that sort of AU really isn't something that I can write (or tend to read) - the world is as much a part of what appeals to me about a fandom as the characters (sometimes moreso, given the amount of OC-heavy historical!TW I write!). Other folks seem to like the genre though - good luck fighting the bunny off! ;)

(for my part, I seem to have signed up for NaNoWriMo. Got a lot of plotting out to do between now and November! Eeek!)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

For me, it very much depends on the AU. I love Fork-In-The-Road ones for Torchwood, but have always struggled to see how it would work as 'full world' AUs. I'm still struggling to be honest, however much fun it sounds. Some characters are very much rooted in their settings, while others are much freer, I think. Due South and Stargate Atlantis work very well in other settings, but for some reason, as much as I love the idea, I'm actually not sure how it'd work for Torchwood. It's a weird one.

(Eeek indeed! I signed up last year and utterly failed to write anything, only realising later that my brain just doesn't work in the way it needs to for NaNo. I'm a sprint writer, and would much rather chug through 50k in a few days at the end - that's actually easier on me than 1650 words a day. Maybe I'll see how I feel on 26th November ;D)

[aeshna_uk]

Torchwood is very much grounded in its own reality, in its own situation and history and sense of place - it's hard to imagine the characters outside of its world. Have never seen SGA but from what I recall of watching DS, it had a pretty tenuous relationship with any sort of reality at the best of times!

50k in a few days? I managed 58k for my Big Bang piece, but that took me three months! Chugging through at 2000ish a day will be a challenge for me, not least because I'm starting the month in Malaysia. Hope the big battery for the netbook hasn't got caught in a postal strike somewhere - I think I'm going to need it.... :/

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

That's very true about both those fandoms :) I think the 'reality' thing is important - when a fandom feels like it's already set in 'our world' albeit a part of our world that we can't see, it's much harder to lift the characters out of it, because they feel so grounded. I could also make a comment about characterisation in SGA (stereotypes make it so much easier...) but I won't.

I've written 3 Big Bangs now, and while I tried to get them done in plenty of time, for each one, I ended up writing it in three or four days. But then I always better at exams than coursework! I have huge admiration for you guys who manage it in an actual, disciplined manner. Will keep my fingers crossed for the battery!

[aeshna_uk]

Yeah. Part of the reason I like TW is that it is just that one step removed from the real world, so that it's easy to look at real-world scenarios and moments in history and slightly twist them to fit. The characters are, for the most part, recognisable as people I could know - complex, messy, sometimes unpredictable, difficult to pigeonhole, real. And actions have consequences, sometimes unpleasant or fatal. And I love that.

(there are those who complain that the TW writers seem to think that "killing characters = great drama", to which I can only respond that while that may or may not be true, it makes for much better drama that always having the heroes escape from mortal peril every week! I'd much rather have a high body count of major characters than no body count at all!)

SGA: well, if it's anything like SG1.... ;)

Heh, I wish I could write that fast! But stories always seem to take their time developing for me - have to do the research and work out how the various parts fit together and develop any OCs and.... It's a miracle I ever get anything finished! :)

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

the world is as much a part of what appeals to me about a fandom as the characters

travels_in_time and I were just talking about this last week -- that's pretty much the way I feel about AUs, too. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around them because to a large extent for me, the characters are rooted in the world; plus I just *like* that world. I've invested a lot of time and emotional energy in it, much as I have the characters, so getting used to a new one would set me off kilter. Even crossovers with non-Whoniverse universes are often hard for me read/write. (With the exception of Jack -- he can fit easily in *any* universe as far as I can tell.)

ETA - I should say I know this is true for Torchwood, but I have read two SGA AUs, the sock one and Jades's pirate one, and I handled those fine. :)

[aeshna_uk]

Jack is certainly... flexible. ;) But even with him, I find it hard to put him elsewhere. I did once manage a short Jack/Dench!M piece, but there it was more because I could already sort-of see them both being a part of the same universe. I'm much more likely to play up and down the TW timeline than I am to take the characters outside of it. :)

[naye]

*giggles*

Not writing it. Right.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

SHUSH! I'm not.

Honest....

[spiderweb-wine.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that would be GOOD. (Not helping you. Sneaking away now)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

NOT HELPING AT ALL *g* Oh. So. Doomed.

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

"Screw Maximillian!"

(As long as it's NOT Ianto as one of the three in the Triangle, I'm all over it.)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

The Maximillian line was the first that came to my mind too. I was actually tempted to make Tosh 'Brian', with Gwen and Rhys as Natalia and Fritz. But I don't know if she's got enough volume to balance Jack/Sally. More contemplation needed.

Not that I'm thinking about writing it. At all *cough*

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

Well, that would actually work well. Brian is as Isherwood told us, the Camera. That part is basically an observer, even when he gets drawn into the drama himself, and I think Tosh would be good in that role. It's Sally who gets caught up in things and starts believing her own b.s.

[fish-echo.livejournal.com]

I think there's something to be said for SGA doing whole-world AUs more frequently than in other fandoms. My guess is it has something to do not only with the characters' characterisations being firmly established, but that depending on how you slice the traits, it ends up easily transferable. So, say, Rodney=genius in his field + prickly + bad with people. Well, now you can just change the field to anything other than physics and he transplants well. Even into becoming a cook, or something else completely different. Whereas, say, Dean from SPN, so much of who he is today is formed by backstory of the show that it's much more difficult to make him into a cook. Torchwood I think would be in between the two shows in difficulty, so I have no idea why there's not more whole-world AUs.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right, but Torchwood's hard to make AU because the characters are MOSTLY brought together by the world. Given the tensions inside the team, it's much harder to lift them into a new place, and to find a situation that suits them. Also, Jack in particular is so woven into a long history (that you'd have to keep or find a new version of) that I guess it makes it much harder to transplant them.

[fish-echo.livejournal.com]

but Torchwood's hard to make AU because the characters are MOSTLY brought together by the world.

Hmm, I suppose I hadn't quite thought of it like that. I had sort of assumed that one could invent a new in-world reason to have them there. But then I suppose it would also have to work as a reason to *keep* them together, and that makes things a bit more constrained in terms of possible worlds.

I will admit to actually being horribly confused by the Torchwood dynamics when I watch the show. I'm better at picking up emotions from the written word than visual media which might be part of it. (I choose to blame what I think is poorish writing/characterisation for some of the rest of it.) But that means I have less of a sense of how the team gels (or doesn't gel) amongst themselves, so less of a sense of how one might transplant them.

[fish-echo.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the bit about Jack....

See, in my mind Jack would be the easiest character -- you make him a wanderer from a far-distant place (Sort of one of those folk-tale trope characters). But if I think on that a bit, it may not fully satisfy the Jack-ness of Jack.

And all of this is theoretical for me because I've *never* tried writing any of them.


Now I have a craving for whole-world Torchwood AUs.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're not the only one confused by the Torchwood dynamics. That probably just means you're watching the show. They're a prickly, tricky bunch to a get a grip on, which is why the setting is so important - I don't think they'd drift together naturally!

[nnwest.livejournal.com]

I'm not writing this *whimpers*

I wish you luck, but that is a seriously cracktastic set up. It might end up gnawing at you until you give in. :)

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

ahem (http://community.livejournal.com/reel_torchwood/857.html?thread=58969#t58969)

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the soup!

Seriously, I am NOT going to write a Cabaret.

Yes, you are. C'mon, join the gang! It doesn't have to be the whole thing, and mine has undergone a few plot tweaks you won't see in the original film (mostly the aliens, I will admit).

*lures*

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

The soup was awesome for minimum effort. Always my favourite kind of thing :)

*hangs head* If only I actually *needed* persuading (http://community.livejournal.com/reel_torchwood/857.html?thread=58969#t58969). DOOOOOOOOOOMED, I tell you...

[crystalshard.livejournal.com]

*bounces with joy*