A Twist of Things to Come

Usually, when I get all angsty and emo, I'm either hormonal or coming down with something. Just as I started watching Torchwood, the other shoe dropped.

I have one mofo of an earache. OW,OW,OW. I've taken something for pain, and I'm sure it will help. OW,OW,OW. Eventually.

About Torchwood... I have to say I think this series was a fitting end to the show. The ratings probably ensure that Torchwood will return in some form, but I kind of hope they leave ( possible spoiler, if youu haven't seen any of series three ) out of it. Jack, too, really. I don't care to see him move on after this. I suspect they will start up with him coming back after trying to get over everything, but he'll never be the Captain Jack I loved from Doctor Who. If they try to make him that way, it would be wrong and nonsensical. (Though they DID have him emerge sane after being buried for ages and ages, so they've pulled that crap before.)

I'm just saying, as a stand-alone TV miniseries, this was pretty darn good. The tragic love story could have been better developed, but that is the fault of the previous seasons' lack of cohesive narrative clarity.

I could totally see some form of Torchwood: The Next Generation or some such, and I might watch it. I still thing that, overall, tremendous potential was squandered with the concept.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS IN COMMENTS

The latest musings by Goddess of All are up on GeekaChicas under te title Surfing for a Job. I've known GoA since early adolescence, when neither one of us had any idea what utter and complete geeks we'd turn out to be. I know she's tremendously overqualified for her current job, so I wish her much luck. I couldn't believe the advert she found on Craig's List, though. Fella wasn't asking for much, now was he?

In case you'd wondered, I'm over my little pity party. Some sleep helped, though I believe it was 2am when Wee Boy knocked on my door complaining that the cat was under his bed. "I tried to get him out myself, but his hair came off." *headdesk* "Leave the cat be and go to sleep!"

Went to wake him this morning and couldn't open the door. Something was blocking it, so I had to shove. Once I got my head in I realized it was Wee Boy himself. The cat is sleeping in his own room tonight, I tells ya.

Big Boy has gone to a sleepover, and I have time to do some stuff. No longer quite in te mood to run for the hills.

I've even got around to thinking that maybe they planned for this to be the end of Torchwood entirely, and will kill off the remaining kill-able cast members tonight. That kind of cheered me up. :)

First, we've got a new article up on GeekaChicas which questions certain orthodoxies concerning climate change, called Two Days Before the Day after Tomorrow.

I may be dating myself here, but I remember the early 1970's when the grown ups were all talking about how a new ice age was coming. *shrug* But when the government has just declared polar bears endangered when polar bear experts still question the population data, which may support the idea that the population is actually higher than before... well, you start to wonder if maybe we'd be better off gathering data instead of giving in to our emotional need for a crusade. Sort of like the AmazonFail debacle -- that righteous fire that inspired us all to speak out against injustice that turned out to be a programming error. For reals. (Oh! But searches for "homosexuality" still bring up mostly anti-gay books! Newsflash: They always did. "Homosexuality" is one of those clinical words that helps depersonalize the subject, and is used more frequently by the gay-bashers (at least the ones who write books). The word "gay" brings up mostly gay-friendly items, just as it always has. Sorry, no controversy there. GlAmazon remains one of the most socially liberal companies we have.) Don't feel bad, I fell for it, too.

My point is, seats on the bandwagon start to look awfully comfy after a while. I'm all for questioning orthodoxies, even the ones we really want to be true. I don't necessarily agree with either side of the issue -- I'm fairly certain I don't understand it well enough. The emotional response that arises when people dare to question it makes me leery, though.

***

In other news. OMG!!! TORCHWOOD!! Still good after three nights, though maybe not as cliffhanger-y as that first episode, still. It's tight and real, more so than the other series were. Give them lives and families, human connections, and we care. Get us emotionally invested, because only then do we have drama. This is why all the sensationalistic same-sex snogging of the first two series tended to fall flat -- there was little emotional context.

As much as I enjoyed seeing the Jack and Ianto relationship progress, it was in these last three episodes that I really got a feel for Ianto as a person. Where he came from, why he is the way he is, all stiff and proper in his smart little suits. Not just, 'Oh, that's Ianto. He's reserved.' It's clear now that he was deliberately drawing a line between where he came from (with hints of tremendous father issues) and who he wanted to be. Yet, we didn't have to be hit over the head with it to feel the emotional truth there. Bravo!

And Jack! They've taken pains to reveal his humanity, to make it clear that his cocky, abrasive extroversion is his coping mechanism. I started thinking how would I ever be able to connect with anyone, knowing that a vast river of time would eventually separate us? It's hard to feel sorry for Jack -- immortal, forever (well, nearly) young -- but they managed that, too.

I actually enjoyed Gwen and Rhys, too, now that you can see clearly how she loves him and isn't just settling for him because she can't have Jack. (I don't even want to remember Owen, though the actor did a good job of making me hate him less, once he was a zombie. Still, it's so much better without him. Owen always struck me as irredeemably skeevy.)

If you've never seen Torchwood before, I suggest you start with this series. You may miss some subtleties, but you'll be better able to deal with the uneven nature of the first two series once you're invested in the characters, which this series manages handily.

The Holiday is over and all that. First, I must acknowledge the ever-lovely micehell for the Torchwood audio books and radio dramas -- they made my weekend more pleasant than it might have been. YOu are an angel of light and mercy.

Then, onto a girl I've known since I was ten, the newest addition to the GeekaChicas gang, using the unassuming pseudonym, "Goddess of All." Her first article, "Tag Along Spouse? I think not!" It's not a new idea for us at GC, but one that bears repeating -- Just because you don't notice the women in fandom doesn't mean we aren't there!

Plus it has pictures of fit men in Spartan costumes! (Golly, I'm shallow.)

In other news, we've got at least one person to post on the Forum about why certain of our Kick-Ass Femmes of SciFi and Fantasy TV poll choices were sucky -- a development which pleases me greatly.I had hoped for a little more discourse on the topic, but I suppose time will tell.

There's another article I have up my sleeve that might very well stir up some controversy, even among the Chicas, since I know they are dotted all along the political spectrum. We don't usually go directly political, but I've no desire to stop anyone from speaking her mind. I'm hopeful it will at least spark some spirited discussion, but we'll see.

So here's a meme gacked from splix: five lists of five.
( Cut for Length )

Scene cut from Torchwood episode "Meat" that I love so much I wish I could kiss it:



Come to think of it, I'd like to bite Ianto, too.

Pardon the following entertainment rantypants post.

"A Day in the Death" had a lot going for it. For one, it got me to like Owen while he was actually in character as himself (I loved the awkward, geeky, lovelorn Owen in "Adam") and the urge to shake Toshiko until she grew a spine did not surface once, because she was quite spineful throughout. They did a good job of showing us how awful the living death must be for a man like Owen, who lives for his pleasures. That was cool.

But... (you knew there would be one, yes?) OMG they had to ruin it with at least two plot contrivances that drove me NUTS. I'm easy when it comes to suspending my disbelief, you know? I barely scoffed at Darkman when a guy whose lips have been burned off still managed to speak with perfect enunciation when his fake skin was ripped off during the climax.

The two offending plot points are behind the cut.
( Spoilery Rant )

I can overlook a LOT of logical leaps as long as the story itself is internally consistent, but that went beyond my tolerance.

On the bright side, there was little Gwen, Jack still has lovely eyes and I liked Ianto's moment of defensiveness about his expanded role in operations. He should be defensive. I wondered how long it would be before someone suggested a causal link between his dalliance with the boss and the fact that he's no longer just the teaboy.

I hesitate to call it the worst ep this season because some of it was really powerful, but this was the worst internal continuity problem in a single episode so far.

I hooked my best friend on Torchwood, so in addition to reminiscing about House on the Rock-induced migraines, we talked Torchwood. The last one she'd seen was "Meat" and we had a nice talk about Badass!Ianto. Ooo, scary.

Also, we've decided that we prefer to interpret the 'resussikiss' as Jack somehow sharing his excessive life energy with Ianto, instead of particularly inept rescue breathing. Makes sense, since he shared his lifeforce with the alien mist possessing Carys the same way. At least he didn't have to kiss Abaddon.

We both have a bit of a problem buying the chemistry Jack is supposed to have with various women, especially Gwen, though my friend doesn't share my proclivities. *cough*

We are in complete agreement that series two is fabulous so far-- there is yet to be an episode that isn't stronger than the better ones of series one. A thoroughly enjoyable show. This season, anyway. Did anybody catch Neil Gaiman snarking about Torchwood series one characters being too dim to live? Too funny not to quote:

...and yesterday I composed an entire thing in my head I didn't write down about Why The People in Torchwood Season One Are All Too Stupid To Live -- including the astonishingly puzzling incident where someone in 1941 has written something down on paper with black ink (a medium that will last legibly for centuries if kept out of the sun), and, unaccountably worried that ink on paper will fade and become unreadable in time, first she takes a prototype Polaroid photo of it, and then writes some of it in blood and puts it in a coffee can in a damp cellar, because these media will still be readable seventy years later. Why she didn't make a model of it out of chocolate as well, I will never know.

*tee, hee*

***

I've been watching OZ on DVD while my Beloved is in Africa, mostly because I know he won't watch with me. I probably shouldn't, because they do stuff on that show just to kick you in the gut. Stuff you should see coming a mile off, but it still hurts. The nicest characters die cheap or get tortured in horrible ways. I should really rent videos of cute bunnies frolicking on grassy hillsides. It would be better for my outlook. :D

***

Got the boys watching Death Note. I know, I know. A lot of anime is recycled, and this has many elements that are familiar. The main character is the super-smart High School student, Light Yagami. He's perfect (scored highest of anyone on the national exams, natch), cool and aloof but still popular. He finds a Death Note, the notebook the Shinigami use to take people's lives. Whoever's name is written in the book will die. The Shinigami Ryuk, who dropped the Death Note, wrote instructions on how to use it inside it. Light finds it and can't seem to keep himself from trying it, just to see what happens. He kills a criminal who has just taken a daycare center hostage, then a petty thug, just to test whether the first death was a coincidence.

After that, he's wracked with guilt at the horror of what he's done-- for about 20 seconds. Two minutes he's developed a peachy God Complex and is out to clean up the world by killing all the people he judges to be bad. Then by killing the law enforcement types hunting him. Of course the law enforcement types are led by the mysterious "L"- a character no one has ever seen. What follows is the most convoluted game of cat and mouse I've ever seen, full of implausible "but I prepared for this in advance! ha-HA!" revelations.

But I love it anyway. LOVE. IT.

I think it is in large part because of the visuals. The Shinigami Ryuk is the freakiest thing I've seen in a long time, and the good-guy mastermind "L" also has his freak on. By which I mean huge dark circles under his eyes, never wears shoes, always sits in a crouch... I mean the character designs are really unique. In a lot of anime, characters all look the same except for their rainbow hair.

The plot is becoming tiresome, yet I cannot look away. O_O

For splix

Photographic evidence behind the cut.

( Family resemblance? )