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.
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 LIFE I 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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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.