torch (fan)

Fan
Name:	torch
Alias(es):	flambeau, theendofcake
Type:	Fan Writer
Fandoms:	The Vampire Chronicles, Star Trek: Voyager, X-Files, Harry Potter, Highlander, SW:TPM, popslash, Gundam Wing, Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural, many smaller fandoms, such as Jeeves and Wooster, The Coldfire Trilogy, Good Omens, Georgette Heyer, From Eroica With Love, Arthurian Legend
Communities:
Other:	The Flambeau Factory torch's recommendations Radio Free Cascade
URL:	torch at AO3 torch at Dreamwidth flambeau at LiveJournal theendofcake at Tumblr
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torch, a Swedish fan with a command of English to embarrass most native-born speakers, has been active in fandom since around 1995. torch's recs page, created on October 16, 1997, was one of the first multi-fandom recs lists on the net -- and perhaps one of the first to explicitly state it was "recommendations" rather than reviews.

She started out as a BNF in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles fandom, followed by Star Trek: Voyager, The X-Files, TPM, Gundam Wing, Popslash, SGA, and currently SPN. She's also written in more than two dozen other fandoms, including BtVS & Angel, Highlander (Methos, anyway), Harry Potter, The Coldfire Trilogy, Heyer, From Eroica With Love, and more.

Meta

• Abuse (1998 essay by torch)
• Characterization (1998 essay by torch)
• Feedback (1998 essay by torch)
• Women (1999 essay by torch)
• Discrimination (1998 essay by torch)
• Pairings, wave theory, interpretive communities (2007)

Notable Works

In X-Files, she is perhaps best known for her M/K novel Ghosts, written in 1997, the first part of her North-West Passage[1] series that was later continued with Lovers. Ghosts won the 1997 Whammy for Best Angst Fic, Best Long Fanfic, Best Mulder/Krycek Fanfic and torch won for Best Author. The fan reaction was so strong that it led to a "Top Secret" project for fans to show their appreciation to torch for writing Ghosts, some of which has been saved as the Ghosts Zine Project, ^{Archived version}. Hard copies of both Ghosts and Lovers were archived in the Escapade Fanzine Library.

In Star Wars: TPM fandom she wrote Crystallize, a story that has been described as a "quintessential masterpiece" and "brilliant, quintessential Q/O fic" as well as And these are the quiet hours, Episode One: The Quiet Padawan, Gardening at Night, Left Undone, Lives of the Artists.

She also wrote the first Aziraphale/Crowley story in Good Omens fandom, And When He Falls.[2]

Other

• Once more, with feeling (Star Trek: Voyager)
• Pyrolagnia with Anna S. (X-Files)
• Say, do any of you guys know how to (X-Files)
• The Machinery of Heaven (Stargate Atlantis)

On Finding Fandom

In 2006, torch wrote about her first experiences in fandom:

I found fandom on usenet, and lurked for approximately five minutes. I found the newsgroups easy to get into and make friends in, and I have very vague memories of the transition to mailing lists and chat, but that was XF fandom, easy to get into and make friends in as well (at least that particular subset of it). Getting used to lj was odd, because suddenly I had to decide whether to "try out" a person (or twenty), not a mailing list, and I think it's been... trickier, on the whole, but not in any way unfriendly. Then again, most of my friends made the same transition at the same time, so it's not as though I came among strangers.

Comments by Fans

[recommending torch for a Best New Writer Award (ASC Award) in 1996]: If you want to read hot believable P/K smut, read torch's stories. If anyone had told me that it was possible to write P/K D/s games with Harry on top, I'd have said, "Nope, can't be done." Fortunately, I'd have been wrong, and I highly recommend the series of stories that starts with "The Wilder Shores of Love," to anyone who doesn't believe that it can be done.  :-) Her other stories are just as good (including the perfectly toasty "Screwed and Perfect," a dialogue story that was inspired by as discussion of sex toys on the slash mailing list), and how anyone can write as well as she does and write as *much* as she does . . . well I just don't get it.

[recommending torch for a Best New Writer Award (ASC Award) in 1996]: Torch burst onto the scene with swooningly good P/K in Too Dear for My Possessing, and has gone on to thrill us with many wonderful versions of the same pairing, including The Perfect Ceremony, the Wilder Shores d/s series, and a very dark group of post-chute stories. Also a little C/P dialogue that set my monitor on fire (Screwed and Perfect). I have to say that out of all the Voyager fanfic, I find torch's version(s) of Tom Paris to be the most heart-wrenching, as well as the most in keeping with the show. Plus, her thorough reclamation of the Delaney sisters and her new version of *mature* Harry show her to be a versatile, sensitive, and creative writer.

It never even occured to me that XF was slashable until I surfed on in to The Secret Files part of torch's website after reading her P/K's. Then I thought: "WHAT? Mulder and KRYCEK? No freakin' way!"

But I was bored. I needed reading matter. So I looked at "Whipping Boy" and thought: what the hell. It's only 3k. It'll only take a minute.

And I was impressed, by the writing but also by the fact that, suddenly, it didn't seem *quite* so unlikely any more...

So I read the other short-shorts (thinking: well, that was probably just a fluke) and they impressed me even more. Then I read "Ghosts".

Hoo boy.

"Ghosts" has been recommended before on this ng, but I'll say it again: go read. Now. If you only ever read one XF slash story, or one slash story, read this one. It is just sublimely good.

It haunted me (no pun intended) for days afterwards. I took a trip to London and all I could think about was "Ghosts" and how stupid it was of me not to have read the sequel before cutting off my own Net access....

Now, of course, I am a hopeless slash addict. And a pusher too.

Interview

• A 2001 Interview with torch