B-Jewelled

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part Eight )

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000
Notes: This part was going to be posted a few days ago, but my several-week-long procrastination dragged out as I drafted and redrafted this part. I realised that I really hated the part, so it got taken away, gutted, and pretty much completely rewritten. I like it much more now.

( Part Seven )

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part Six )

I've been watching a few films lately... the summer's always good for a few decent blockbusters, so... what have I been thinking... well....

( The Dark Knight )

( X-Files: I Want To Believe )

( Star Wars: The Clone Wars )

---

In other news, it's a great day when I can hang around my workplace, playing "Still Alive" on the computers. Closing ceremonies at midday, I look forward to seeing them! :D

Woo. I've managed to put a rec together for two weeks in a row. This, for me, is like, practically a regular thing.

This recommendation comes from the Final Fantasy VIII world, and that has the privilege of being a genre I have found even less in the way of decent stories than DS9. In fact, it is safe to say that this is the only FF8 fic I have ever read in its entirety, and one of the best fics I've read in general.

Quite accidentally, I joined Final Fantasy XI, the FF MMORPG, and met Beanie, and wound up knowing her for some time before I realised that she was in fact the Greenbean that had written this story. I have the honour of knowing her as a friend, and some of the other stuff she's written for FFXI is also worth a read (although it is quite incomprehensible if you don't know her in-game characters).

This is a story set before the game, exploring the backstory and how the characters came to where they were at the start of FF8, and explores other characters who were only glimpsed in the game, such as Xu, expanding her backstory and giving it a thorough depth that the game was lacking in some areas. In short, if you ever liked the game, hell, if you ever played it, this is a story you should read.

Sowing the SeeDs.

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part Five )

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part Four )

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part Three )

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part Two )

Title: Potentiality (Or: How I Learned To Loathe The Quantum Bomb)
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Somewhere between “Countrycide” and “Captain Jack Harkness”, Ianto Jones went from hardly knowing how to hold a gun to be willing and able to use it. How did he get there, and what did he have to sacrifice in the process?
Notes: I have a pet project: to write a story for each of the main Torchwood characters. “On Being God” was Toshiko’s, “Restless” was Gwen’s. And this one is Ianto’s.
Word Count: ~45,000

( Part One )

I've gotten tired of rec communities lately. For a certain coughTorchwoodcough fandom, the same stories by the same authors seem to get recced over and over across comms. There's a definite bias towards certain pairings in that fandom that don't make it very friendly if you don't write that pairing. But! I'm not here to debate that, I'm here to make some recommendations which I hope are a little different, that haven't been recced over and over, and which have something that actually makes them unique.

I'm thinking of making this a regular weekend thing. But I'm not, as you might think, kicking off with a Torchwood story. Instead, I'm going with Deep Space Nine.

I've read a remarkably small amount of DS9 fic. Its heyday was pre-LJ for the most part, so it's a bit harder to dig up the good stuff, I think, because it tends to be on personal websites, and not widely known about (or, at least, not widely disseminated outside of a given fandom). I stumbled across a rec for this story on another website, and thought it was lovely.

The story is in three parts (Orfeo, Eye of the Storm and Anslem) and is collectively referred to the author as Jeu-Parti. It is slash, involving Jake Sisko and an original Vulcan character, but if you're not a fan of slash, please don't let that put you off.

I don't agree with some of the way the Federation is portrayed here, with 20th Century biases firmly in place in some respects, but I appreciate that the author is using the medium of science fiction to convey and examination of Human behaviour, and how society views the different. For that alone, I would recommend it.

It was written pre-2000, a point which wouldn't normally matter, but you need to read that to understand that the second of the three stories is neither being uncomfortably thoughtless or echoing reality (but is remarkably prescient).

So some of the layouts for LJ are very pretty, but there is this heavy tendency towards being extremely NARROW in appearance. Now, this is fine if you just make a couple of paragraphs worth of blog posts, but to post anything like, say, fanfic, which is a lot of text, narrow layouts are the enemy.

So I had to disable the custom pages when I switched layouts.

This is annoying. Can we not have something pretty that fills the screen? A lot of people have widescreen monitors now, can we not design with that in mind?

I realise this might sound like a cue for me to decide to design something, but I am actually rubbish at it, so don't even ask...

I'm being very disturbed by adverts lately. There's a furry-tastic Orangina ad playing at the moment which is just wrong in so very many different ways. There's also a Dolce&Gabbana advert for something called 'light blue' which has the standard scantily clad male and female sticks putting their tongues down each other's throat. The surreal part comes when, in the last moments, a clapperboard comes out of nowhere and yells 'cut'.

Now, I would understand this directorial decision if there was some sort of gag to accompany this. But no, it's just a clapperboard. Why?? There's no relevance to the subject of the ad, though.

And in the face of this bizzarity, they banned the Helmans ad with the gay kiss. *rolls eyes*

Apparently "Featherstone-Haugh" is pronounced 'farshaw'. We English can be very strange sometimes.

Title: I Dream Of Chocolate Fish
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Out of your time, and all you want is a nice bit of fish. It’s hard being a pterodactyl some days.
Word Count: ~3,650

( Read more... )

So, apparently Freema Agyeman will not be in Torchwood. At least according to Digital Spy and the Sun.

Frankly, Digital Spy is the broadcast industry's version of tabloid journalism, and the Sun is... well... the Sun, so take it as you will. Whether or not she's appearing, I wouldn't believe the spiteful overtone of the piece. It smacks of typical tabloid stirring-the-pot.

Still.

I got to see WALL-E last night, a late showing that meant there weren't any children in it apart from two who had least had enough sense to keep quite after it had started.

Long story short: I loved it.

Long story long: ( I really loved it. )

I've always been of the vague opinion that details in storytelling don't necessarily need to be accurate for good storytelling. Which makes it all the more surprising to me that with the recent horizonssing challenge, I'm having to bite my lanyard and restraining myself from hitting the comment button. This is simply because communications infrastructure is my job, or more to the point, my company's (my own job is in a different division). It totally doesn't matter, because the story's are fun to read, but I want to point out that the BBC no longer has a broadcast division, or exactly what a satellite groundstation looks like.

So, you know. Shut up, me. Because you're a sad loser who doesn't need to spoil other people's fun because you're a geek. Go back to playing the first line game on ff.net or something. ;)

Anyway! Dr Horrible! Oh. My. God. Joss Whedon, you bastard for pulling your usual tricks. If you see this post while the episodes are still up, and you haven't yet seen it, GO SEE IT NOW. And then pay for it when it becomes available for download, because this is the sort of thing that needs supporting to prove to US studios that direct to audience stuff works.

I was astonished at the sheer number of people in the credits, though, given that it was apparently made on a shoestring budget. But then, it's who you know, I suppose. I'm reminded of a video that some clients of ours made for their annual conference. The contribution from the German division of the channel was a take-off on Das Boot, complete with the actual submarine used in the film. German arm is based in the same town, and people knew people, apparently.

It was also a damned funny film, and you couldn't get it on their intranet because they were afraid it would leak to the internet. Wasn't very PC. Very very funny though.

Anyway, Dr. Horrible did lead me to watching The Guild though, which was quite entertaining, even if the last episode was a bit painfully awkward in its dialogue and geekishness. I thought it had otherwise worked up to that point. Still worth a look if you're like me and managed to miss this particular bit of internet culture (apparently I fail for not having noticed this before, but then I only recently became a WoW player).

Speaking of World of Warcraft, I want a Voidwalker plushy, please. Myfanwy's getting lonely.

Title: From Our Correspondant
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Doctor Who
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is the legal property of the BBC, and has been for a while now.
Summary: Post “Journey’s End”. An interview with up and coming author, Donna Noble.
Notes: I refuse to accept the occasional view that it would have been better if a certain character had died, because that's never a better end to someone's story.
Word Count: ~1,300

( From Our Correspondant )

( It's Myfanwy! )

And how do we know it's Myfanwy?

( Because she has chocolate!! )

Title: Clean Up, Aisle Five
Author: Jewels (bjewelled)
Web Link: http://www.bjewelled.co.uk/fanfic/twfic.shtml
Fandom: Torchwood
Disclaimer: Torchwood is the legal property of the BBC. In case you didn’t know.
Summary: Post DW’s “Journey’s End”, because we all wanted to see Jack back at the Hub, and yet were denied.
Notes: I’m not a big fan of writing the post-episode reactionary fic, mostly because everyone always writes the same thing (and usually better than I could), but sod it, I want my ending, and it also contains a bit of dialogue I’ve wanted to include in a fic but could never find a place. And yes, I’m aware it’s a bloody stupid title.
Word Count: ~2,350

( Clean Up, Aisle Five )