Hiya, you have reached Gwen Cooper. I'm unavailable, so please leave a message and I'll call you back as soon--

Oh, Jack, this bloody well better be impo--

::click::

::beep::

{{please leave any messages for Gwen or her mun if you need to reach us!}}

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."
- Robert Frost

Even on the clearest of Cardiff days, when the wind from the bay hardly chills her bones on the walk towards the Plas and her coffee from the local cafe tastes a bit better than usual, she still knows all that doesn't mean just because she's at work her brain got there, too.

Working for Torchwood has it moments of frustration. Some days, that frustration caps at her inability to locate the "Select All" button on her e-mail before she hits "Delete."

( Gwen's Inbox )

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Cut for an image
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Quote from Robert Frost
Verse: Open/Crack
Word Count: 82 + image
Note: Liberties with canon timeline have been taken.

Go here and reload until you get five quotes that sum up your philosophy or outlook, then post them.

"The first and great commandment is: Don't let them scare you."
Elmer Davis

"How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
Mahatma Gandhi

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
Mae West

"Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away."
Dag Hammarskjold

Wake up.

There's something.

Just wake up.

She's not really asleep, not really quite unconscious or dead. She's aware of the fact that her legs are moving, even though she can't feel them. She feels her arm around Suzie, the sting of her shoulder as the weight of her body is near-dragged across the pier. She watches the splintered wood as her feet shuffle along, one foot in front of the other, Gwen. Keep moving, keep feeling.

( Wake up. )


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Cut for length
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #301: Wake Up
Verse: Open/Canon Verse
Word Count: 431

I put this up at my personal journal, but it's fun so I figured I'd put it up here as well. Feel free to answer just one or more.

A. "Has my portrayal of a character(s) changed the way you think of him/her?"

B. Pick one of my characters and I'll answer the following questions about him or her.
1. What would your character kill for? What would they die for?
2. What would they refuse to do under any circumstances? Why?
3. What do they dream about?
4. What’s their biggest fear?
5. What single object would they be most hard pressed to part with? Why?
6. What is their fondest memory?
7. What is their worst memory?
8. What or who was were their most significant influence? Expound.
9. What do they believe makes a successful life?
10. What makes them laugh?
11. What are their religious views?
12. What is their greatest strength?
13. Do they have a fatal flaw? If so, what is it?
14. Who is the most important person in their life?
15. If they died, who would miss them most? How would they die?

C. Pick a fandom, any fandom I'm in. I will tell you:
1. One True Pairing Ship:
2. Canon Ship:
3. "If this happens I'll stab my eyes out with a spork" Ship:
4. "You are one sick puppy" Ship:
5. "I dabble a little" Ship:
6. "It's like a car crash" Ship:
7. "Tickles my fancy but not sold just yet" Ship:
8. "Makes no canon sense but why the heck not" Ship:
9. "Everyone else loves it but I just don't feel it" Ship:

Fandoms:
Torchwood (Gwen Cooper at alien_catcher)
Doctor Who (no muses)
Life on Mars (no muses)
Ashes to Ashes (Alex Drake at poshmouthytart)
Stargate SG-1 (Vala Mal Doran at letsmake_babies)
Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler at thewomanswit)
The X-Files (no muses)
Star Trek: The Next Generation or Voyager (no muses)

Non-fandom muses are:
Camel (Original character at crowdedhour, talkingcamel)
Artemis (Greek mythology at fallenpedestals, maidenhuntress)

This is how the world ends.

It lay in dust, now, the singular reminder of what had been the end of her old world, and the beginning on her new. She picks up the shoe box, and the dust is coarse against her palm, scratching against the warped, peeling cardboard as she clears it away.

Inside are the memories of a life she once lived, before the world ended. An identification card, with a picture of a woman who had become a stranger. It was unsettling to think that had once been the face she saw, every day, when she looked in the mirror. Her old warrant card from the police; she’d never been told, exactly, to turn it in, so she never did. A few newspaper clippings, the ones that had not been kept in her desk and had not, thus, been lost when her old world had burned.

A single, faded photograph. The smiling face of a familiar stranger, surrounded by the figures of ghosts who have never ventured far from the safe confines of her memory.

( The video tape lay at the bottom. )

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Cut for length and minor spoilers for Children of Earth
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #300: This is...
Verse: Open Future
Word Count: 497