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And I've never been part of a problem that I did not ignore or start
Having watched the first-season finale and just about half of the second season of Torchwood (2006–11), I have put the series on hold until I can track down the rest of the first season, because while I am truly spoiler-indifferent and really enjoying the show, I have realized I don't want to replicate my experience of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun (1993–96), where I short-circuited at least one major character's arc by reading the second half first.
There are four volumes of The Book of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Caldé of the Long Sun (1994), and Exodus from the Long Sun (1996). The plot concerns a revolution on a generation starship whose gods are literally ghosts in the machine, except perhaps for the minor god whose revelation to a young augur in the first novel kicks off a quest that starts like the Blues Brothers and ends like Les Mis; unlike Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (1980–83) with its experimental play of memory and time, The Book of the Long Sun is notable for its dead-ahead structure which does not even incorporate flashbacks, although occasionally its characters dream. In other words, all information not encountered in order in the text must be explicitly filled in or deduced in hindsight, and Wolfe uses this technique to keep the reader reevaluating interactions and motivations in light of later events. It was therefore utterly disastrous for me to read the last two volumes first, which of course I had no way of knowing one late autumn night in my junior year of college when the second-half omnibus was lying around a friend's dorm room and I wanted something to read while five people I liked very much were carrying on a conversation that bored me completely.
The Book of the Long Sun is one of the narratives where I have a favorite character; his name is Patera Remora and he is the coadjutor of the city-state of Viron, which in the classically inflected religion of the Whorl means more or less what it does in the Catholic or the Anglican Church, only with a lot more haruspicy. When encountered for the first time in Caldé of the Long Sun and even more so in Exodus from the Long Sun, he is an excruciatingly sympathetic character. In the midst of spies and factions, barricades and negotiations and casualties on all sides, Remora is a paper-pusher out of his depth and he knows it. Sometimes it makes him funny, but he's frightened all the time. A fence-sitter by nature and an establishment figure by profession, now that he's thrown in with Patera Silk and the revolutionaries against the Ayuntamiento of Viron and even a schism of his own Chapter, he's trying desperately to do the right thing and mostly floundering toward it, but to say that he's not graceful about the process is several orders of understatement. Conversationally, he's one of those formal, diffident people who are always correcting themselves like an unsolicited apparatus criticus; physically, he's the kind of tall and thin that looks like a deck chair folding up when he takes a seat and he can be trusted to trip over his own feet at moments of action almost as reliably as over his own tongue at moments of truth. One of his characteristic gestures is nervously pushing his hair out of his eyes, another worrying his religion's equivalent of a rosary. Emotionally, he's a mess. Undergoing a classic katabasis in the tunnels beneath Viron with the sibyl-turned-revolutionary-general Maytera Mint and an agent of the Ayuntamiento, Remora is scalding in his self-honesty and oblivious when it comes to reading the room—he has a knack for choosing exactly the wrong moment to unburden his conscience, share his feelings, or suggest a stratagem for which there is invariably a simpler solution. And yet he does come out of it stronger, with a truer sense of himself and what matters to him than when he started, even if you could still give yourself an ulcer waiting for him to finish a complete sentence; it's not silly at all that by the end of the series he's become one of the central figures of the exodus to the planet the ship-born characters call the Short Sun Whorl, eventually the Prolocutor of the Vironese Faith on Blue. He'll do it well now—he wouldn't have before. And the ghost of his mother in Mainframe is proud of him.
When encountered for the first time in Lake of the Long Sun, Remora is not sympathetic at all. He is an ecclesiastical snot. For all his easy invocation of the gods, he's far more office politician than priest, as polished as he is insincere, more concerned with keeping a lid on an inconvenient theophany than with actually helping the manteion on Sun Street out of its financial difficulties as Silk has been appealing for weeks, even though leaving the younger augur to his own devices just accelerates the combination of divine and secular intrigues that drives the unraveling of the Whorl; he's a second-order antagonist but a tellingly blinkered one, so enamored of his own delicacy in disposing of a sensitive affair that it doesn't occur to him to investigate further, except where he imagines that he already knows what he'll find. He intercepts letters, he offers bribes. He may not be as destructive, but he's as good a representative as any councillor of the Ayuntamiento of the structures of power and complacency that Silk will end up shaking to their roots. Of course his fastidious self-assurance will crack to pieces the minute the world begins to shift its shape, his petty ambitions and illusions rendered profoundly and embarrassingly irrelevant by the events spiraling around the man he once blessed and brushed off in the same patronizing farewell. Serves him right, the would-be Richelieu. He was always behind the eight-ball of this game and it wasn't even billiards in the first place.
Coming in at the point where this character started to break down into sympathy, I missed all of that. I missed that he had ever been so supercilious and comfortable instead of shocky and gauche, that he had casually talked down to and ordered around characters before whom he would be shown as indecisive and incompetent when faced with soldiers and spy-catchers instead of circular letters and cups of beef tea; I missed that he had ever thought he was on top of this situation and not just scrambling to survive it. I missed that he had done harm. I missed how much he grows as a person. There's no reason to expect from Remora's introduction that the glossily dismissive emissary from the Prolocutor's Palace would ever put himself in danger for the sake of a truce or offer himself for torture in a comrade's place or get himself demoted to regular augur and nonetheless walk around beaming at everyone because he finally lived up to his mother's dreams for him. Seriously, it's a good arc, all the more so because it belongs to a person who never stops looking or sounding like an emotionally disorganized deck chair that teethed on a thesaurus, and it's not like I can't still appreciate it for the id-blast that it is. But I got it back to front and while that is sort of apropos for the character, I really suspect it would have been even more effective in the right order.
Anyway, since I have seen character development already in the seven episodes of Torchwood I've watched so far, I figure I should go back for all of it from the start, even knowing that the writing of the first season has some hiccups, to say the least. I hope Gene Wolfe of blessed memory appreciates that I have taken the lesson. Not everyone can make me care, even slightly, about linear narrative.
There are four volumes of The Book of the Long Sun: Nightside the Long Sun (1993), Lake of the Long Sun (1994), Caldé of the Long Sun (1994), and Exodus from the Long Sun (1996). The plot concerns a revolution on a generation starship whose gods are literally ghosts in the machine, except perhaps for the minor god whose revelation to a young augur in the first novel kicks off a quest that starts like the Blues Brothers and ends like Les Mis; unlike Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (1980–83) with its experimental play of memory and time, The Book of the Long Sun is notable for its dead-ahead structure which does not even incorporate flashbacks, although occasionally its characters dream. In other words, all information not encountered in order in the text must be explicitly filled in or deduced in hindsight, and Wolfe uses this technique to keep the reader reevaluating interactions and motivations in light of later events. It was therefore utterly disastrous for me to read the last two volumes first, which of course I had no way of knowing one late autumn night in my junior year of college when the second-half omnibus was lying around a friend's dorm room and I wanted something to read while five people I liked very much were carrying on a conversation that bored me completely.
The Book of the Long Sun is one of the narratives where I have a favorite character; his name is Patera Remora and he is the coadjutor of the city-state of Viron, which in the classically inflected religion of the Whorl means more or less what it does in the Catholic or the Anglican Church, only with a lot more haruspicy. When encountered for the first time in Caldé of the Long Sun and even more so in Exodus from the Long Sun, he is an excruciatingly sympathetic character. In the midst of spies and factions, barricades and negotiations and casualties on all sides, Remora is a paper-pusher out of his depth and he knows it. Sometimes it makes him funny, but he's frightened all the time. A fence-sitter by nature and an establishment figure by profession, now that he's thrown in with Patera Silk and the revolutionaries against the Ayuntamiento of Viron and even a schism of his own Chapter, he's trying desperately to do the right thing and mostly floundering toward it, but to say that he's not graceful about the process is several orders of understatement. Conversationally, he's one of those formal, diffident people who are always correcting themselves like an unsolicited apparatus criticus; physically, he's the kind of tall and thin that looks like a deck chair folding up when he takes a seat and he can be trusted to trip over his own feet at moments of action almost as reliably as over his own tongue at moments of truth. One of his characteristic gestures is nervously pushing his hair out of his eyes, another worrying his religion's equivalent of a rosary. Emotionally, he's a mess. Undergoing a classic katabasis in the tunnels beneath Viron with the sibyl-turned-revolutionary-general Maytera Mint and an agent of the Ayuntamiento, Remora is scalding in his self-honesty and oblivious when it comes to reading the room—he has a knack for choosing exactly the wrong moment to unburden his conscience, share his feelings, or suggest a stratagem for which there is invariably a simpler solution. And yet he does come out of it stronger, with a truer sense of himself and what matters to him than when he started, even if you could still give yourself an ulcer waiting for him to finish a complete sentence; it's not silly at all that by the end of the series he's become one of the central figures of the exodus to the planet the ship-born characters call the Short Sun Whorl, eventually the Prolocutor of the Vironese Faith on Blue. He'll do it well now—he wouldn't have before. And the ghost of his mother in Mainframe is proud of him.
When encountered for the first time in Lake of the Long Sun, Remora is not sympathetic at all. He is an ecclesiastical snot. For all his easy invocation of the gods, he's far more office politician than priest, as polished as he is insincere, more concerned with keeping a lid on an inconvenient theophany than with actually helping the manteion on Sun Street out of its financial difficulties as Silk has been appealing for weeks, even though leaving the younger augur to his own devices just accelerates the combination of divine and secular intrigues that drives the unraveling of the Whorl; he's a second-order antagonist but a tellingly blinkered one, so enamored of his own delicacy in disposing of a sensitive affair that it doesn't occur to him to investigate further, except where he imagines that he already knows what he'll find. He intercepts letters, he offers bribes. He may not be as destructive, but he's as good a representative as any councillor of the Ayuntamiento of the structures of power and complacency that Silk will end up shaking to their roots. Of course his fastidious self-assurance will crack to pieces the minute the world begins to shift its shape, his petty ambitions and illusions rendered profoundly and embarrassingly irrelevant by the events spiraling around the man he once blessed and brushed off in the same patronizing farewell. Serves him right, the would-be Richelieu. He was always behind the eight-ball of this game and it wasn't even billiards in the first place.
Coming in at the point where this character started to break down into sympathy, I missed all of that. I missed that he had ever been so supercilious and comfortable instead of shocky and gauche, that he had casually talked down to and ordered around characters before whom he would be shown as indecisive and incompetent when faced with soldiers and spy-catchers instead of circular letters and cups of beef tea; I missed that he had ever thought he was on top of this situation and not just scrambling to survive it. I missed that he had done harm. I missed how much he grows as a person. There's no reason to expect from Remora's introduction that the glossily dismissive emissary from the Prolocutor's Palace would ever put himself in danger for the sake of a truce or offer himself for torture in a comrade's place or get himself demoted to regular augur and nonetheless walk around beaming at everyone because he finally lived up to his mother's dreams for him. Seriously, it's a good arc, all the more so because it belongs to a person who never stops looking or sounding like an emotionally disorganized deck chair that teethed on a thesaurus, and it's not like I can't still appreciate it for the id-blast that it is. But I got it back to front and while that is sort of apropos for the character, I really suspect it would have been even more effective in the right order.
Anyway, since I have seen character development already in the seven episodes of Torchwood I've watched so far, I figure I should go back for all of it from the start, even knowing that the writing of the first season has some hiccups, to say the least. I hope Gene Wolfe of blessed memory appreciates that I have taken the lesson. Not everyone can make me care, even slightly, about linear narrative.
no subject
Long Sun: I read the first book and never got around to the rest. I was put off by a female character who I think is topless most of the time? Should I continue? I love The Book of the New Sun a lot even though its treatment of women leaves a lot to be desired.
no subject
I have been made aware that in 2006 Russell T Davies was apparently unaware that alien roofies are still roofies and not funny. I also expect to treat it Doylistically when I get there; from what I've gathered, the first season was much more unevenly written all round. In case it needs saying, although I am fond of the entire team, Owen is my favorite character on the show. Tosh and Ianto, too.
I read the first book and never got around to the rest. I was put off by a female character who I think is topless most of the time?
I think Chenille possessed by Scylla doesn't bother very much with clothes. I am also not sure that Hyacinth ever got much characterization beyond the beautiful courtesan with whom our protagonist is in love. I like Maytera Mint quite a lot. (There are other female characters; those are just the three I remember best. All of my copies of these books are in storage.)
Should I continue? I love The Book of the New Sun a lot even though its treatment of women leaves a lot to be desired.
I also love The Book of the New Sun and nothing else in Wolfe's bibliography has ever struck me the same way. The Book of the Long Sun is technically in the same continuity, as becomes explicit in the sequel trilogy The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001), but it's really not relevant in Long Sun itself. I don't find the setting of the Whorl as weird or as full of wonder as the dying Earth of New Sun and it's written in a similarly more straightforward style, although it's much more experimental with its dialogue. What I like about The Book of the Long Sun is that it's the kind of narrative that escalates from a street-level problem (save a church from being foreclosed on) to a world-changing one (everybody off the generation starship!) and each step of this progression makes sense in context, just as most of the main cast undergo significant development over the course of the series and finish as quite different, yet still recognizable people from when they began; structurally, I also like the gaps, infills, and recontextualizations, which make final sense in light of the series epilogue. I suspect Wolfe's Catholicism of being central to its philosophical conclusions, but not in a way that makes me feel like the wrong audience, as Elizabeth Goudge's Anglicanism sometimes does. It is successfully defamiliarizing about most of its science fiction tropes. Basically, it is not one of my favorite series, but I read it more than once and would recommend re-trying it if you have liked other things by Wolfe. If you bounce a second time, it may just not be your thing.
no subject
Also, thanks for the book notes. I've liked other things by Wolfe but nothing quite as much or in the same way as The Book of the New Sun. Long Sun sounds interesting. I left too long between book one and two, I think. It sounds like I should read it all of a piece.
no subject
Anyway, at the time when I supplied the episodes to you, that was all of the series that I'd seen, but now having seen the whole thing, I do actually think that watching in order makes more sense. Do you want me to ask around in a couple of places I know to see if I can find a source for you?
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I genuinely appreciate how many people have been making sure to warn me about the alien roofies! (Seriously, it's just about everybody to whom I mention that I'm looking for the first season of Torchwood.)
Also, the second episode of season one features a sex alien and also has Owen being terrible, though not quite as terrible.
I am unsurprised that season one of this show features a poorly handled sex alien.
When Rachel watched it, I just suggested that she start with the third episode, by which point they had finally managed to figure out the difference, with Owen, between "screwed-up mess" and "deeply creepy screwed-up mess." I do generally put it down to uneven writing and Doylistic reasons rather than actual character traits, though.
And they did figure it out. At the point where I came in, Owen was visibly several dumpsters' worth of fire, but none of them were creepy.
This whole post spun off a comment to
"I watched about half of the second season of Torchwood and then put it on hold until I can track down and watch the rest of the first season so that I don't get the entire show completely out of order, so I may have to revise my opinion with further data, but at the moment I am fascinated by it tonally because the episodes I've seen so far function most like a moderately violent, rather hurt/comfort-driven workplace comedy. Everyone operates on a sliding scale of emotional fucked-up-ness and no one gets out of this job alive and they generally seem to save the day at a high cost of collateral damage and yet it registers most strongly to me as the kind of narrative which is driven not by its high-concept sfnal weirdness of the week but by the found-family energies of these disaster humans who might literally take bullets for one another (they seem to have gotten the shooting one another out of their collective system) but are still figuring out emotional maturity with a map and a flashlight. Earlier today I found this brilliant post on different types of stupid characters and it is impossible not to treat it as a kind of 'tag yourself,' but I also suspect you could go through and effortlessly tag the cast of Torchwood. [edit: 'The answer is usually swearing and property damage' may in fact subtitle the show.] I find the effect completely endearing. It's not that it's not capable of serious moments or complex characterization, everyone on the show registers to me as distinct and real and I have feelings about all of them, but . . . look, I just finished 'Reset,' which ends in a major character death, and prior to his major character death Owen spent much of the episode trying and failing to get the singularity scalpel to work without carnage or at least property damage, and it is no small deal that he finally, successfully uses it to save Martha from an alien parasite when it's not even clear that the thing is the surgical instrument he so stubbornly insists on as opposed to some kind of alien energy weapon, but he almost vaporizes Ianto in the process and he does accidentally explode a hitman. I love all aspects of this situation. I just feel like normally I see its equivalent in fic, not actual canon."
Also unsurprisingly, I have a lot of feelings about Owen and Tosh not actually managing to have their experimental date before he gets dead.
Do you want me to ask around in a couple of places I know to see if I can find a source for you?
Thank you! I have a friend who actually looking on my behalf as we speak, but if for whatever reason it doesn't pan out, I will return to your offer.
no subject
I am fascinated by it tonally because the episodes I've seen so far function most like a moderately violent, rather hurt/comfort-driven workplace comedy.
.... this is amazingly and delightfully accurate. :D Yeah, I think Torchwood might be one of the weirdest shows I've seen - it's not as if other comedic found-family sci-fi doesn't exist, but I can't think of anything else with this show's particular mix of those elements with its sometimes extremely dark, horror-esque edge, as well as a mix of surprisingly deep emotional realism with gleefully, goofily batshit plot elements and effects.
I wasn't sure if it would be your thing or not, but I am really delighted that you're liking it! I, too, find it deeply charming and endearing. I really didn't expect to get sucked down when I rewatched it this spring, because it didn't do this to me back in 2008 - but I now realize that a big part of that was having had a massive ragequit due to later developments, and now that I've managed to compartmentalize the part of the show that I like from the part I don't like, I am finding that I do, in fact, really love it, and remember how much I loved it the first time around.
I just finished 'Reset,' which ends in a major character death, and prior to his major character death Owen spent much of the episode trying and failing to get the singularity scalpel to work without carnage or at least property damage, and it is no small deal that he finally, successfully uses it to save Martha from an alien parasite when it's not even clear that the thing is the surgical instrument he so stubbornly insists on as opposed to some kind of alien energy weapon, but he almost vaporizes Ianto in the process and he does accidentally explode a hitman.
Yes! I think the entire thing with the singularity scalpel is such a great encapsulization of Owen's character (and also the show in general), because he is a flaming dumpster fire of a human being, but he also has this bone-deep drive to help people - it's the deep and fundamental core of him, to the point where he is determined to take an object that almost anyone else would take one look at and assume is a weapon, and not just use it to heal people, but also insist that healing people, not hurting people, is its function. This despite almost blowing up (or actually blowing up) various people with it. And he does actually make it work! But then he dies like 5 minutes later - saving Martha and his friends, no less. It is ludicrous and wonderful and darkly funny and bleak and optimistic - just a really excellent combination, very much narrative catnip for me.
I love all aspects of this situation. I just feel like normally I see its equivalent in fic, not actual canon.
Yeah, I feel like the show overall is indulgent in a way you don't normally see on TV. (Iron Fist was somewhat that way too, though the feel is different.) One of the main things about Torchwood that sucked me in is its sheer unrepentant willingness to commit - to the full (melo)dramatic emotions of the scene, or to its utter bonkers-ness, whatever the situation calls for. This show doesn't really do things by halves.
I have a friend who actually looking on my behalf as we speak, but if for whatever reason it doesn't pan out, I will return to your offer.
Sounds good - just let me know!
no subject
Oh, good! I also have many feelings at the moment. It's even made me think again of learning to vid, which never happens, but which every few years I contemplate.
.... this is amazingly and delightfully accurate. :D
Thank you! Please feel free to snurch, if useful, and if people still use that verb.
(I have had a particularly exhausted, discombobulated, rather miserable day, but have recently been cheered up by witnessing friends elsenet arguing over the conjugation of yeet. Someone just defended the use of the perfect passive participle yote into the sun by invoking the Great Vowel Shift. Humanity at its best.)
Yeah, I think Torchwood might be one of the weirdest shows I've seen - it's not as if other comedic found-family sci-fi doesn't exist, but I can't think of anything else with this show's particular mix of those elements with its sometimes extremely dark, horror-esque edge, as well as a mix of surprisingly deep emotional realism with gleefully, goofily batshit plot elements and effects.
I love the combination and I love the fact that it works. If I have encountered anything like it elsewhere—and I keep feeling that I have, but I haven't been able to place it—it's definitely not on English-language TV. At the moment it reminds me very slightly of the manga Saiyuki.
I wasn't sure if it would be your thing or not, but I am really delighted that you're liking it!
It is definitely one of my things. Once I got past the initial glitch of PTSD, it seems to have slotted itself immediately into comfort viewing, which might always have been true but is especially unsurprising under current conditions. Everybody is a disaster and nobody gets out alive, but that doesn't mean you stop fighting, no matter how ridiculously, horrifyingly weird things get. I'm so glad you have been able to rediscover your love for it! I will undoubtedly watch through the later developments and then read a lot of fic.
I think the entire thing with the singularity scalpel is such a great encapsulization of Owen's character (and also the show in general), because he is a flaming dumpster fire of a human being, but he also has this bone-deep drive to help people - it's the deep and fundamental core of him, to the point where he is determined to take an object that almost anyone else would take one look at and assume is a weapon, and not just use it to heal people, but also insist that healing people, not hurting people, is its function.
Yes! And I am truly not sure that he's right, because it's a piece of junk that fell through the Rift and left its service manual in another dimension, it could be a super-advanced toilet de-clogger for all anyone knows, but if he's wrong, then the resident abrasive cynic of Torchwood Three turned a thing of destruction into a thing of lifesaving by sheer force of bloodyminded caring and that makes it even more beautiful. (And poignant: "You save one life, a hundred lives, but it's never enough . . . Who will save me?")
It is ludicrous and wonderful and darkly funny and bleak and optimistic - just a really excellent combination, very much narrative catnip for me.
That is also a really good tonal summation of Torchwood. At least at this stage of its development, it's not a grimdark show.
(Iron Fist was somewhat that way too, though the feel is different.)
(Agreed. Iron Fist did less with black comedy, but it shared the emotional realism combined with plotting from Mars.)
One of the main things about Torchwood that sucked me in is its sheer unrepentant willingness to commit - to the full (melo)dramatic emotions of the scene, or to its utter bonkers-ness, whatever the situation calls for. This show doesn't really do things by halves.
That's part of what I'm enjoying as well. There's a real sense of skating on the edge: I understand it means that when the show screws up, it screws up spectacularly, but then so do its characters, so I accept the appropriateness.
Sounds good - just let me know!
Friend just came through! Expect more feelings.
no subject
You know, it actually kind of does, although I think Saiyuki wasn't quite weird enough - I mean, Saiyuki is weird, but set against the backdrop of the general bizarreness of a lot of other manga in its genre, it's actually pretty much within acceptable parameters or even on the coherent side. Whereas Torchwood is weird (and also queer) in a way that American sci-fi TV just isn't, which I think is part of what gives it that unique flavor.
I had thought that Torchwood never made that much of an impression on me in 2008, but then I was thinking today about how this Owen icon - that I made for myself just after I finally decided to check out the show and marathoned nearly all of season 2 in a handful of days, and a couple of days before I ragequit the show over the final episode of season 2 - is one that's meaningful enough to me that I held onto it for twelve years, through my bitter resentment of where the show ended up, through the move from LJ to DW and all of the various icon cleanups as I fell in and out of love with new shiny things. So perhaps it's not that surprising that I was primed to fall back in love with it when I went back to it. Sometimes you do. And in particular ...
Once I got past the initial glitch of PTSD, it seems to have slotted itself immediately into comfort viewing, which might always have been true but is especially unsurprising under current conditions. Everybody is a disaster and nobody gets out alive, but that doesn't mean you stop fighting, no matter how ridiculously, horrifyingly weird things get.
Yes! I think this is one of those cases of hitting it when I was in exactly the right headspace for it. Come to think of it, I must have been in a not-too-different headspace in early 2008 (coming off 8 years of Bush) and maybe that's why I liked it then, too. But it happened to slot very neatly into a particular kind of emotionally satisfying viewing/reading for me right now. They live in a world that's unsafe and unhappy and unfair, but they carve out their own little enclave of warmth and light, for however long it lasts, and they never give up and they never stop trying to stave off the dark for however long they can. I am very much here for that.
At the same time, the show is just bonkers enough (and also just dated enough) not to remind me too much of any specific thing that I don't currently want to think about, whereas some other things I love that have the same "enclave of light in darkness" feeling (the Ben January books, say) are just a little too close to home in some ways to quite hit the level of escapism that really makes for comfort viewing right now.
Yes! And I am truly not sure that he's right, because it's a piece of junk that fell through the Rift and left its service manual in another dimension, it could be a super-advanced toilet de-clogger for all anyone knows, but if he's wrong, then the resident abrasive cynic of Torchwood Three turned a thing of destruction into a thing of lifesaving by sheer force of bloodyminded caring and that makes it even more beautiful.
YES. ALL OF THIS. He not only decided that it was definitely and absolutely a lifesaving tool, but he made it be one, because he just wouldn't give up until he got it to bend to his determination to save people with it.
I love that dichotomy of Owen - his bitter cynicism and angry urge to push people away, constantly at war with his innate caring and the way that he instantly shifts into concerned doctor mode when someone needs his help.
At least at this stage of its development, it's not a grimdark show.
No, it's really not. I think in seasons three and four, it actually does become grimdark, and that's one reason why I refuse to admit those seasons into my personal headspace. But the first two seasons, as dark as they can be, are very optimistic about human resilience in a way that really speaks to me right now.
no subject
Part of it is the disaster party vibe, but I just wouldn't be surprised if a non-binary bodhisattva turned up on Torchwood and flirted with everyone. I may be more surprised that it never happened.
Whereas Torchwood is weird (and also queer) in a way that American sci-fi TV just isn't, which I think is part of what gives it that unique flavor.
I still wouldn't say that the show's hit its stride by the mid-first season, but we are definitely into the realm of "I just watched that on TV, so I guess it wasn't fic," which feels essentially Torchwood to me. I loved "Countrycide" because everyone everyone is prepared for aliens and it's just Sawney Bean, but I also loved it because it's full of the team taking mostly literal hits for one another and Owen being rubbish at camping. "Cyberwoman" is basically Whumptober in a can: take the neatest, most reticent, most buttoned-down and nearly invisible member of our main cast, here's your forty minutes of suit porn and crying. (Less facetiously, I also consider it the show's best handling of sexuality to date: the first episode established a quietly flirtatious vibe between Ianto and Jack and now we find out Ianto's been hiding his half-Cybered girlfriend in the basement for four months and absolutely no one remarks on the Kinsey scale because the Hub's in lockdown, there's a Cyberwoman fighting their pterodactyl, and in any case Jack's almost shot him at least twice. "Greeks Bearing Gifts" was also generally less concerned with Mary's human-form gender than with the fact that she uses Tosh to get into Torchwood. That episode reminded me strongly of the eavesdropping passage in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: whatever Tosh hears through the filter of the pendant and Gwen and Owen's new relationship energy, an episode ago Owen was the one yelling at Jack about how they couldn't just leave Tosh and Ianto on their own in the murder village; but that's not the memo she gets.) I rather bounced off "Small Worlds"—it's a nice conceit, but I have high standards for narratives that invoke the Cottingley Fairies, Yeats' "The Stolen Child," and forests that exist only in the deep time of the land—but I can appreciate the show attempting the experiment of dark fantasy rather than horror-sf.
this Owen icon - that I made for myself just after I finally decided to check out the show and marathoned nearly all of season 2 in a handful of days, and a couple of days before I ragequit the show over the final episode of season 2 - is one that's meaningful enough to me that I held onto it for twelve years, through my bitter resentment of where the show ended up, through the move from LJ to DW and all of the various icon cleanups as I fell in and out of love with new shiny things.
That does seem telling and also a nice thing to discover you didn't lose.
They live in a world that's unsafe and unhappy and unfair, but they carve out their own little enclave of warmth and light, for however long it lasts, and they never give up and they never stop trying to stave off the dark for however long they can. I am very much here for that.
Le Guin, "Nine Lives" (1969): "We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?"
whereas some other things I love that have the same "enclave of light in darkness" feeling (the Ben January books, say) are just a little too close to home in some ways to quite hit the level of escapism that really makes for comfort viewing right now.
GOOD AFTERNOON HAVE YOU CONSIDERED ACCEPTING MY OPINIONS ABOUT HANNIBAL SEFTON INTO YOUR LIFEI can see that.I love that dichotomy of Owen - his bitter cynicism and angry urge to push people away, constantly at war with his innate caring and the way that he instantly shifts into concerned doctor mode when someone needs his help.
Yes. And I'm glad to see it as far back as the first season, in "Ghost Machine," in "Countrycide" where his first major scene with Gwen is that hard sell on workplace bad romance but his second is treating her for a shotgun blast, at which point he's as fast and gentle as he can be and even when her hand wanders from gripping the shoulder of his jacket to stroking the back of his hair, he stays focused and professional, which does not mean detached: "Come on. I'm good."
I think in seasons three and four, it actually does become grimdark, and that's one reason why I refuse to admit those seasons into my personal headspace.
I really can't throw out Children of Earth because it did introduce me to Peter Capaldi, but I respect your decision. I appreciate that Ianto has a shrine in Cardiff, but I'd prefer if he didn't have to.
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I did really enjoy "Greeks Bearing Gifts" with its evenhandedness about Tosh's new girlfriend (she's homicidal and terrible, but not in a way that has anything to do with it being a lesbian relationship; the only sour note was Jack's OOC transphobic comment, which again I am inclined to fob off on the writers rather than having it be a character note). It's too sad to be a favorite, though. I wish she had gotten to hear something nice, and I also wish the show had followed up on her peek into Ianto's depression.
Oh, speaking of which, there's a really gorgeous missing scene from "Cyberwoman" with Ianto and Tosh that I really wish they'd kept. It takes place at the end of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trHsWBDdGXk
in "Countrycide" where his first major scene with Gwen is that hard sell on workplace bad romance but his second is treating her for a shotgun blast, at which point he's as fast and gentle as he can be and even when her hand wanders from gripping the shoulder of his jacket to stroking the back of his hair, he stays focused and professional, which does not mean detached: "Come on. I'm good."
Oh man, that scene where he's treating Gwen is so lovely, as well as his clear worry for their missing teammates; it's so interesting to me, such a gorgeous character touch, that Owen, the cynic, is the one who keeps insisting they have to go back for the ones they've left behind.
Re: the character deaths and the show's growing darkness in later seasons - I can't deny that it does fit the world. They've told us from the beginning that most people don't get happy endings in Torchwood. But I just want to center myself onto a "happy place" version of the show consisting of everything before the season two finale, and stay there. I still wish the show had delivered another season or two of this incarnation of the team dysfunctionally learning to love each other.
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Following up on mid-to-later season one, "Random Shoes" is barely a Torchwood episode at all as opposed to a short film about a man and his life and an alien eyeball, but I liked it immensely and was vaguely surprised it wasn't nominated for a short-form dramatic Hugo (I am intrigued that that honor went to "Captain Jack Harkness," because that episode isn't remotely standalone) and "Out of Time" through "End of Days" registered to me as all one arc, which if intentional is fascinating because the through-line is Owen.
Apparently, between this and "Countrycide" (which delivers wonderfully on the team front), all I want from this era of the show is these people running around in the dark getting chased by things that want to kill them. I am a simple girl of simple tastes.
Mind if I request casefic from that era?
the only sour note was Jack's OOC transphobic comment, which again I am inclined to fob off on the writers rather than having it be a character note
Agreed. It was so out of character that it startled me until I remembered the episode was written and shot in 2006, which was a bit of ironic future shock. "You people and your quaint little categories . . ."
I wish she had gotten to hear something nice, and I also wish the show had followed up on her peek into Ianto's depression.
I said to
Oh, speaking of which, there's a really gorgeous missing scene from "Cyberwoman" with Ianto and Tosh that I really wish they'd kept. It takes place at the end of the episode
Oh, dammit. I can see why it would have been cut, because it distracts from the rhyming bookends of Ianto going about his work with no one noticing and Ianto going about his work with all eyes on him, but it's such a beautiful little grace note.
Oh man, that scene where he's treating Gwen is so lovely, as well as his clear worry for their missing teammates; it's so interesting to me, such a gorgeous character touch, that Owen, the cynic, is the one who keeps insisting they have to go back for the ones they've left behind.
"Countrycide" shows off some of the best of Owen in season one, including that the beginning of his relationship with Gwen actually looks more like human comfort than screwing an irresistible bad idea all night. I mean, it is still a bad idea. But they can hold each other and know what they've been through.
I still wish the show had delivered another season or two of this incarnation of the team dysfunctionally learning to love each other.
I don't see how it would have hurt anyone, me right now included.
Do you know if they were having problems with renewal? A half-TPK is such a weird thing to build a season toward and a miniseries third season—with another permanent regular death!—is an even weirder continuation.
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It feels that way to me too, and it is really interesting, because yeah, Owen is the emotional screw that holds the last third of the season together. He doesn't come across as anywhere near that important in the first half of the season. But it does echo, to an extent, the way that Ianto fades into the background in the first three episodes, only to suddenly come into his own in "Cyberwoman," when it turns out that his invisibility was by his own design. Owen appears early on to be mainly comic relief or at least the team's shallow playboy, but then he develops the emotional gravitas that carries the show through its final arc in this season. I really enjoy that particular reversal of expectations: "you thought this wasn't important, but actually, it's the most important thing."
"Countrycide" shows off some of the best of Owen in season one, including that the beginning of his relationship with Gwen actually looks more like human comfort than screwing an irresistible bad idea all night. I mean, it is still a bad idea. But they can hold each other and know what they've been through.
Yes! I was actually VERY surprised that I ended up as sold on Gwen/Owen as I was. I mean, it's a terrible idea all around, obviously. But the episode really sells it as a mutual comfort/shared-experience kind of thing, containing its own measure of human warmth as well as being something that the characters might plausibly do.
Oh, dammit. I can see why it would have been cut, because it distracts from the rhyming bookends of Ianto going about his work with no one noticing and Ianto going about his work with all eyes on him, but it's such a beautiful little grace note.
Yeah, from a narrative standpoint I can see why they wanted to go out on the scene they went out on, and I can't even actually figure out exactly how this scene fits with that one. But as an individual scene, it's just so lovely and such a nice touchstone for a relationship that doesn't get much development otherwise.
Do you know if they were having problems with renewal? A half-TPK is such a weird thing to build a season toward and a miniseries third season—with another permanent regular death!—is an even weirder continuation.
I don't have any idea. It's possible that it could be a planned endpoint that ended up feeling extra jarring when the show veered off in a different direction and then was dragged back to the original plan, perhaps planned that way for two seasons - one could more easily see the first season ending with two characters' deaths for (mainly) shock value than the second. I still find it bizarre that they would build up the team relationships so thoroughly in season two, and especially Owen's relationships with the team, only to blow a hole through that and anything interesting that might have come out of it.
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Okay, nine minutes in, the thing about this episode that actually offends me is that the plot of an alien that kills by the extraction of orgasmic energy was done in 1982 in Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky and that film is a genderbending stone feminist masterpiece; if your sex alien is not on that level, just don't even try. (Their sex alien is not on that level.)
When Rachel watched it, I just suggested that she start with the third episode
Definitely beginning to cohere by the third episode. Owen has emotions beyond perving on people, residual hauntings are a classic of British TV, and I laughed out loud at "Bernie Harris, the Scarlet Pimpernel of Splot."
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I found myself describing the first two episodes to
(There are still elements in the first two episodes that are valuable and interesting. In "Everything Changes," I liked not just the bait-and-switch with Suzie, but the reasons for it, establishing immediately the wear and tear and the stakes of working for Torchwood; the entire sequence with Gwen delivering pizza and the team utterly failing to pretend they didn't clock her, capped by Owen copping to being the twat who orders pizza to a top-secret extra-governmental agency under its own name, is genuinely funny and juvenile without being too mean-spirited and of course it was Owen, no wonder Ianto's got custody of the pizza orders in season two. "Day One" mostly showcased the value of Gwen to the team, but I liked some of its dialogue: "Period military is not the dress code of a straight man." I was interested by the brief catalogue of the different Torchwood locations—London, destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf; Glasgow, which Jack makes sound like a one-man operation; Cardiff, on account of the Rift; and the one that went missing, whose location is never specified but given the distribution of the other branches across England, Scotland, and Wales, I promptly assumed Torchwood Four had been in Northern Ireland, in which case it probably just fell through a fairy ring one day and that's all there is to it. That's nice worldbuilding! There's just all the other stuff that feels frustratingly out of true.)
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The third episode felt like it suddenly snapped into focus: I could see how we got there from here. I recognized the Tosh who guides her comrades by CCTV and cheers Gwen for snagging the alien artifact even if she lost the suspect, the Owen who does his doctor's best to save the life of a man against whose face he was holding a knife a moment ago.
Yeah, it feels that way to me too. The third episode is where you can abruptly see them as themselves, and Owen in particular suddenly feels much more like his "real" self - I particularly liked his turnaround from trying to kill the guy, to trying desperately to save his life when it became necessary. That's very, very Owen. And also his instant sympathy for the girl who was killed, and his obsessive search for justice for her, even in the face of his teammates telling him to give up.
Oh, rewatching this episode reminded me what a jerk early-season-one Jack frequently is. Jack is really holding himself back from the team in season one, and then in late season one/season two he just gives up and decides to love these people, or rather, I guess, to admit that he already loves them, but that's one of those areas where knowing where it's headed is helpful in not hating him early on.
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Regarding the alien roofies, I also hate that the jokiness about sexual consent effectively camouflages the fact that Owen is canonically thrilled to go home with a girl he pulled in a bar and her boyfriend.
(I will definitely have recommendations there, by the way, when you're ready for them, if audio-only is a dramatic format you enjoy - it really isn't for me, but they are good enough I've made an exception for them.)
It is not one of my native formats, but
She is terrible, and tragic, and relatable, and even likable at times. I like that we see so much more of her in the audios than we got to see on the show.
That is a very good use of extended canon. I have most recently finished "They Keep Killing Suzie," which supplied some further and intriguing facets. Also I seem to like Indira Varma and I am trying to figure out where I could possibly have seen her before.
And also his instant sympathy for the girl who was killed, and his obsessive search for justice for her, even in the face of his teammates telling him to give up.
Yes. Which not incidentally helps a lot to recenter Owen from being a sexual creep: faced with a rape-murder, he's unequivocally on the girl's side.
Jack is really holding himself back from the team in season one, and then in late season one/season two he just gives up and decides to love these people, or rather, I guess, to admit that he already loves them, but that's one of those areas where knowing where it's headed is helpful in not hating him early on.
I don't know that it would have gone as far as hating him, but he's much more of a hard-ass and it's doing his team cohesion no favors. It doesn't feel accidental that three episodes so far have centered around characters choosing personal attachment (Ianto to Lisa, Tosh to Mary, Gwen to Suzie) over duty to Torchwood. I can see that's building toward "End of Days" when the entire team will open the Rift in joint defiance of Jack, but it also doesn't say much for his management skills at this point in his immortality.
[edit] Good news; speaking of "End of Days," it had desensitized considerably by this time around.
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Yeah, that scene is the one and only definitive evidence of Owen's bisexuality in the run of the show (I feel there are additional hints of it in his interactions with the guy they're conning in the cage fighting episode, but not that clear-cut), and unfortunately it's a scene that's so terribly squicky that I wish it didn't exist.
Which not incidentally helps a lot to recenter Owen from being a sexual creep: faced with a rape-murder, he's unequivocally on the girl's side.
Yeah, I think as far as a sympathetic introduction to Owen, this episode works much better than either of the previous ones, which was why it made sense to point Rachel there, since both I and the other person we were watching with (who had also seen it before) really wanted her to like Owen ...
I don't know that it would have gone as far as hating him, but he's much more of a hard-ass and it's doing his team cohesion no favors. It doesn't feel accidental that three episodes so far have centered around characters choosing personal attachment (Ianto to Lisa, Tosh to Mary, Gwen to Suzie) over duty to Torchwood. I can see that's building toward "End of Days" when the entire team will open the Rift in joint defiance of Jack, but it also doesn't say much for his management skills at this point in his immortality.
Yeah - Jack's general darkness and dysfunctionality was one of the big reasons I bounced off season one when I watched the show back in 2008 (the reason why I had only seen season two until this summer). I have a lot more sympathy for him this time around; I think it's much more obvious to me, especially comparing season one Jack to season two Jack, how incredibly messed up and unhappy he is, and how hard he's trying to keep from getting attached to the team, both due to being hurt before, and due to knowing that they're going to die and leave him. But Jack's hot-and-cold, alternately hands-off and overbearing management style directly contributes to the team's general dysfunction in season one.
... also, I have absolutely no idea when Jack and Ianto started sleeping together. It appears to happen somewhere between Countrycide (when Ianto says his most recent kiss was with Lisa) and "They Keep Killing Suzie," when they definitively are sleeping together, but it had to be off camera. Of course it's also possible they were sleeping together before Cyberwoman, stopped for a long while, and then at some point around the time of "They Keep Killing Suzie" they started again. The show makes it very hard to say.
Additional comments to come re: the audiodramas (and the other episodes you've now seen).
[edit] Good news; speaking of "End of Days," it had desensitized considerably by this time around.
Oh good, I'm glad to hear it!
What did you think of Owen's arc? I feel that, now that I've seen the entire series rather than just season two, it actually does add a lot to Owen's arc in season two to have seen how far down he went in season one.
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I thought his edge-of-doomsday proposition to Tosh and Ianto in "Sleeper" was pretty unambiguous, even though it's not canonically followed up on. Without prior bias from the alien roofie scene, it was enough for me to categorize him instantly and affectionately as a disaster bi.
Yeah, I think as far as a sympathetic introduction to Owen, this episode works much better than either of the previous ones
It works much better for the entire team! Neither of the previous episodes seemed to have worked out exactly how damaged or amoral or callous the Torchwood team was supposed to have become in the line of duty and whether the audience should find it intriguingly edgy or warningly offputting or what. There's that scene in "Day One" where Owen, Jack, and Tosh are all watching the CCTV footage of Gwen making out with the sex alien—which they know has the potential to reduce her to a pile of fine orgasmic ash!—and it takes all three of them a long, reluctant moment to agree that they should probably interfere, which I just can't see happening even an episode later. Suzie actually stands out much less from her teammates, emotionally, in the first episode than she does by the time of "They Keep Killing Suzie."
But Jack's hot-and-cold, alternately hands-off and overbearing management style directly contributes to the team's general dysfunction in season one.
It suits the general theme of everyone at Torchwood being an emotional trash fire, but it was a good thing for everyone including the audience that he went off with the Doctor and sorted himself out (the process actually seems to begin with "Captain Jack Harkness" when he finally tells something true about himself to Tosh and goes back to kiss the man whose name he wears, but he backslides rather badly during "End of Days." It was absolutely not inevitable that Owen would shoot him).
... also, I have absolutely no idea when Jack and Ianto started sleeping together.
I thought it happened for the first time following the end of "They Keep Killing Suzie." Something about the way Ianto says, "If you're interested, I've still got that stopwatch" struck me as both bold for him and a little diffident, as if leaving room for Jack to turn him down, astronomically unlikely as that outcome might have been. I agree that without further references in dialogue or onscreen PDA, it's hard to tell. Delaying their first visible kiss until the season finale was an interesting choice. I wasn't sure what to make of it, except perhaps that it dramatically refutes Owen's sneer of a "part-time shag."
Oh good, I'm glad to hear it!
Thank you! Any demonstration of psychological healing rather than merely accumulating damage in this our year of everything 2020 is actually quite heartening to me!
What did you think of Owen's arc?
I have not yet finished season two! I have caught up on the rest of season one and am contemplating just watching straight through the first half of season two again as opposed to skipping ahead to "Reset" and continuing on. I can offer opinions on season one Owen, which in the second half consist majorly of "ouch." That is not a man who handles the discovery of emotional vulnerability well at all.
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... okay, true. And yeah, I think he is 100% serious about it.
I have not yet finished season two! I have caught up on the rest of season one and am contemplating just watching straight through the first half of season two again as opposed to skipping ahead to "Reset" and continuing on.
Oh right, I forgot you had stopped after "Reset"! Honestly, I recommend watching the first half of season two again - I think you'll get new things out of it now that you've seen season one, and then you'll have that entire emotional roller coaster fully prepared to launch you into everything that comes after "Reset."
This spring, I watched all of season two for the second time (having watched it back in 2008); then I watched season one; then I rewatched the whole thing from the beginning with
(Someday I want to write the fic about Gwen, between seasons, ordering everyone to do team-building exercises, because it seems like exactly the kind of thing she'd do ... and it actually works, possibly only because they are interrupted halfway through by aliens and have to fight for their lives.)
I can offer opinions on season one Owen, which in the second half consist majorly of "ouch." That is not a man who handles the discovery of emotional vulnerability well at all.
"Ouch" is definitely the right reaction to season one Owen.
One of my Torchwood-watching friends described Owen as a man in a hatesex relationship with his emotions, which is tragilariously accurate.
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That's why I stopped where I did and went back. Even in hindsight and just in the first half of the season, a number of elements are quite impressive given the start conditions. (The fact that Owen agrees to go on a date with Tosh. It's not even the fact that it's Tosh, in whom he displayed negative interest in the first season. It's that for most of the first season he demonstrated no capacity for dating rather than sexing and for the rest of the first season he demonstrated no capacity to recover from Diane. I remain fascinated by the reversal of their crush dynamic in "Adam," because while I suppose Adam might have done it to amuse himself, I took it—at the time—to mean that underneath all the cynicism Adam claimed to have scraped away, the attraction to Tosh was already present. That little quirk of a smile he gives her right before he takes the Retcon, when he is his own cynical, scared, standoffish self again but still remembers being the hopeless geek in love with her. His line at the end about not doing flowers or apologies put "I Won't Send Roses" in my head for the next three days.)
I particularly found myself enthralled with watching Owen and Ianto develop a smooth working partnership after they were literally brawling on the floor and shooting at each other at the end of last season.
I still feel the show dropped the ball a little with Ianto in the first season because there were no visible stages between the time they almost all died because he stashed a Cyberwoman in the basement and the time no one thought twice about including him on the camping trip to the murder village, but it does reverberate through the end of the season, as witnessed by the aforementioned brawling. It just struck me now that Ianto, Tosh, and Owen each have similar arcs of trusting or being trusted by their teammates, which may be another reason that I class them more closely than Jack or Gwen.
(Someday I want to write the fic about Gwen, between seasons, ordering everyone to do team-building exercises, because it seems like exactly the kind of thing she'd do ... and it actually works, possibly only because they are interrupted halfway through by aliens and have to fight for their lives.)
I agree strongly with the second half of this sentence. Minus the aliens, I suspect a complete washout. Can you imagine trying to get Ianto to do a trust fall?
"Ouch" is definitely the right reaction to season one Owen.
So much of it is self-inflicted. Which is entirely in character, but you watch him snap out something unforgivable just because one of his teammates thought about asking if he was okay, and it is just facepalming. And therefore his forgiveness from Jack lands like twenty tons of emotional TNT and I can't believe I forgot it for thirteen years.
One of my Torchwood-watching friends described Owen as a man in a hatesex relationship with his emotions, which is tragilariously accurate.
Please tell them from me that's beautiful.
Audiodrama recommendations
Anyway though, these are my favorites of the ones I've listened to so far; there are quite a few I don't have yet.
The Last Beacon (Owen & Ianto) - This is light, fun, hopeful, and generally adorable; it's one of the few that's unreservedly optimistic and happy. It's written by Gareth David Lloyd (Ianto's actor) who very clearly just wants his character to have a road trip with Owen and become better friends.
Dinner and a Show (Ianto & Tosh) - Another one written by Gareth David Lloyd and demonstrating once again that his dream episode is Ianto hanging out and being friends with his teammates. This one's a bit darker and sadder than the above one, but it also gives better Tosh than 90% of the series does; one thing I notice when I go back to the show after listening to this is how much more resilient, funny, and bold Tosh is written here than she generally gets to be on the show.
Moving Target and Sync (Suzie) - The two Suzie-centric audios, both of which have almost the same plot (Suzie is forced to team up with someone she doesn't like while aliens try to kill her). I liked the first a bit better overall, but I preferred the ending of the second, and enjoyed both of them a lot.
Iceberg (Owen) - This starts off light and fun, and gets increasingly depressing with a horribly dark ending, but you also get to see a lot more of Owen's sympathetic side, and Owen being a doctor.
Cascade (Tosh) - This one does really nice things with the general conceit that you're listening to a corrupted recording that's spliced together out of order and kills people who listen to it.
The Office of Never Was (Ianto) - Another one that starts off funny and takes a downhill slide into absolutely horrifying, including Ianto making a very dark decision at the end. But it has a lot of parts that are really fun, and the mystery of a haunted building that traps Ianto after hours is spooky and fun.
The Hope (Owen & Andy, Gwen's police friend) - I don't know if this one would be to your taste; it's fairly dark, the plot concerns a serial killer and Owen undercover in a prison, but I ended up really loving it, and it has a surprisingly upbeat ending for how dark the rest of it is (also I want to write fanfic for it).
Dissected (Martha & Gwen) - This is funny and poignant, and I really liked it. It's set after Children of Earth, so Torchwood at this point consists almost entirely of Gwen, which added an underlayer of profound sadness that made me realize I don't know how many of the ones set after season two I can handle. But the Martha and Gwen interactions are really lovely.
Re: Audiodrama recommendations
No, understood: I am the same way about small presses and self-publishing. Library wouldn't even be an option for me if the CDs were in our local system, since our local system is closed for COVID-19 and I have no idea when they will reopen.
Anyway though, these are my favorites of the ones I've listened to so far;
Thank you! All of these sound interesting to me, although I am less likely to head straight for the depresso endings right off the bat. Is there a particular reason that you're not sure about recommending The Hope to me or just the serial killer/prison plot, in which case I will point out that film noir is also comfort viewing for me. (Either way, you should write fic for it.)
there are quite a few I don't have yet.
Good Lord, this looks like crackfic. I understand that would not prevent it from going incredibly dark, but still. I am delighted to see a couple with Murray Melvin. I am very fond of him.
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No, it's basically just that, and you're right, you're about the least likely person to bounce off it because of that. Unlike the general trajectory of some of the others, this one started out dark and ended up less so.
Good Lord, this looks like crackfic.
If you think that looks like crackfic, check out this one.
Re: Audiodrama recommendations
And he said in the first episode that he was never doing that again!
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Plot-relevant haruspicy, even!
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Re: 5th Head of Cerberus
“of blessed memory” - What, is he dead?
April 14 2019 - Wow. I did not realize how old he was! (That's rather encouraging to me. If he can still be productive that late…)
(Did you know, GURPS did a role-playing game Sourcebook on New Sun? They worked with him, or vice versa, and the result is fascinating to read.)
Re: 5th Head of Cerberus
Yes, I'm sorry. He was a reasonable age for it, but I still hate losing people who create things while those who destroy persist.
(Did you know, GURPS did a role-playing game Sourcebook on New Sun? They worked with him, or vice versa, and the result is fascinating to read.)
I know of its existence! What's it like? (How does it play?)
Re: The Commonwealth, &c.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Commonwealth_map_from_Book_of_the_New_Sun.jpg
Well, it's a reference work; it probably did have campaign suggestions, but I don't recall; I merely perused it at the hobby store. One advantage, of course, was illustration; as one of the Exultant caste, Thecla was seven feet tall!
[And nearly every mountain of note was carved into the likeness of some legendary worthy: “unspoiled” vistas were nonexistent.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascian_language
Re: Nosferahh - choo!
while those who destroy persist
What, you got a problem with vampires? hyukk
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I miss Torchwood. It was a great and zany comfort of messed-up perfection and awfulness (both on plot and body horror) levels in so many ways. It wasn't good, but it was exactly right. Children of Earth was an interesting denouement. Torchwood is also the only time that I've walked around a location that's also a filming location and had quite the doubled vision of it in rain-slicked night while it being bright day; Cardiff waterfront was a good choice. The shrine that is kept up from [redacted spoiler] is both impressive and poignant in the sheer emotive response it maintained for people, years since screening ended.
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Glad to have been of assistance!
I miss Torchwood. It was a great and zany comfort of messed-up perfection and awfulness (both on plot and body horror) levels in so many ways. It wasn't good, but it was exactly right.
I'm loving it. I actually even think that quite a lot of is good; that's just slightly orthagonal to my affection.
Children of Earth was an interesting denouement.
I thought for years it had been my introduction to Torchwood. I was not correct about that.
Torchwood is also the only time that I've walked around a location that's also a filming location and had quite the doubled vision of it in rain-slicked night while it being bright day; Cardiff waterfront was a good choice. The shrine that is kept up from [redacted spoiler] is both impressive and poignant in the sheer emotive response it maintained for people, years since screening ended.
I really like that. I always thought Yale dropped the ball by not keeping their statue of Denholm Elliott on Old Campus after filming wrapped on the fourth Indiana Jones.
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OMG
I MUST read this. This sounds 100 percent precisely up my alley like WOW.
he's a second-order antagonist but a tellingly blinkered one, so enamored of his own delicacy in disposing of a sensitive affair that it doesn't occur to him to investigate further, except where he imagines that he already knows what he'll find. I loved that almost as much as I loved this:
you could still give yourself an ulcer waiting for him to finish a complete sentence
I think he might be my spirit animal or something.
Next chance I get to read completely for my own pleasure--this'll be it.
a person who never stops looking or sounding like an emotionally disorganized deck chair that teethed on a thesaurus, and it's not like I can't still appreciate it for the id-blast that it is. --I hear you on id blast!
... Sometimes it takes me a while to read your longer entries but I love them so much. SO MUCH.
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I feel I should make it clear there are other characters in this series! It has the cast-of-thousands of a nineteenth-century novel! I just like Remora very much—I like stories of becoming better at being human—and it really makes a difference where you start with him.
Next chance I get to read completely for my own pleasure--this'll be it.
Cool! Enjoy!
--I hear you on id blast!
The rest of the quartet is not necessarily, but his entire arc really is.
... Sometimes it takes me a while to read your longer entries but I love them so much. SO MUCH.
Thank you! I'm really glad.
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https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/file/6106.jpg
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That's delightful!