A Chasing After Wind

Title: Christmas After Tommy
Fandom: Torchwood
Warnings: None
Summary: Tosh remembering Tommy, Owen being surprisingly sensitive
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters

( Christmas After Tommy )

I really appreciate that Torchwood tells stories of aliens being abused by humans. Tosh even calls Jack on their own mistreatment of a weevil in Combat.

Just finished re-watching Greeks Bearing Gifts, and it's my favorite episode so far. I seem to recall in the past I considered it my favorite in all of season 1, I'll probably still feel that way. It has flaws - some terrible lines, and a lot of the handling of Mary's character is pretty skeevy. But I feel for Tosh in this episode more than I've felt for any character up to this point.

I'm sure I've said this before, but Gwen at the telling Tosh that she's not in a position to make judgments is a strong contrast to the fannish image of Gwen as completely hypocritical about her own flaws. I don't know how common that image still is, but back when I first watched Torchwood it was ubiquitous.

And in Day One we learn Tosh has at least one ex she wouldn't mind getting revenge on.

Also, this episode is terrible.

- Theories and/or headcanons (whether silly or serious or a bit of both - and yes, you can totally do this for closed canons)

BtVS - During the period in early S7 when Spike was staying with Xander and he and Buffy were not speaking, Spike ran into Clem in a bar. Clem revealed that Buffy had brought Dawn to Spike after Spike had left - after the attempted rape. Spike was stunned.

- Unpopular opinions (this doesn't need to be fandom specific)

SPN - When Sam went to college, I don't think he left Dean/cut off contact with Dean. Rather I think Dean, forced to choose between his father and brother, chose his father, and that led to a mutual estrangement between him and Sam.

- Characters you wish canon had done better by

Torchwood - I <3 Toshiko Sato, but I wish canon had done better by her. I wish she'd had more stories focused on her, and more stories not about her love life.

- Characters you think the canon creators liked too much

SPN - Crowley, Bobby, and Castiel

For fun, I decided to assign the five members of Torchwood Cardiff (Jack, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, and Ianto) to the zodiac signs most applicable to their personalities. This entirely based on personality, not on any hints we might receive about their birth dates.

Owen Harper is easy—he’s such an Aries. Charges his way through life without thinking of the consequences. He is very much a fire sign. Not Leo, because he doesn’t care if people like him. Not a Sagittarius, because he doesn’t have the philosophical attitude toward life.

Gwen is also pretty obvious: Leo. Gwen wants to be liked, wants attention, and yeah, she has that passion.

Toshiko requires a bit of thinking, but I’m quite sure she’s a Pisces. Pisces are very sensitive to emotions. Something tripped me up for a moment: Pisces are supposed to be creative. Tosh is a tech person—not something you typically associate with creativity. And then I remembered her origin in Fragments: She’s also a brilliant inventor, something you definitely need creativity for. Tosh may not be a traditional Pisces, but it’s definitely her sign.

Jack I also had to think about. He has some Sagittarius traits, some Scorpio traits, so many Leo traits that I might define him as Leo if I was exclusively dealing with his Doctor Who characterization. Counting Torchwood canon, I named him Capricorn. Because he likes to be liked, but it’s not essential to his being. Because he is this steely thread of determination that runs through everything he does. This is a man who waited over a hundred years for the Doctor, who lived life on earth to the fullest while never losing sight of his original goal, ready to drop everything in an instant. I think he is a Capricorn: Ambitious, determined, sensual.

And then there is Ianto. Such a classic Virgo in his neatness, and such a classic Scorpio in his secretiveness. I just can’t make up my mind.

11 Torchwood Icons, mostly from season two.

Icon table generated with sql_girl's icon table generator.

Feel free to take, just comment and credit.

( Outside the government, beyond the police )

I spent this morning thinking about hurtful lines from my favorites TV shows. Things that characters say to the people they love that are devastating. I picked out my current favorites from each of my favorite TV shows (Torchwood, Buffy, Supernatural, Jessica Jones). I'm sure there's particularly devastating lines that I've forgotten, but here's what I have now:
( Ow )

TV shows the give me feelings of visceral horror:

Jessica Jones is really, really, the worst in terms of a single character. Torchwood Children of Earth is also very awful, but it’s the whole situation rather than what’s happening to one character that really gets to me. One of the most horrifying moments of Jessica Jones, to me, is when Kilgrave tells her he’ll leave Malcolm alone if she sends him pictures herself. Somehow the fact that he’s asking for selfies, not nudes, just makes it creepier. He has this much control over her, and she has no real choice but to go along with it. And if she doesn’t do it at the right time, he gives implied threats.

Two others that I find very horrifying are Sam Winchester (in Supernatural seasons 3, 4, parts of 5, and the first half of 7, specifically), and Drusilla from Buffy. Drusilla’s situation is more horrifying than Sam’s, but Sam’s is visceral for me as much if not more because he’s a protagonist and we get a stronger sense of his experiences, and also because I love him more.

There’s really no redeeming factor to Dru’s story. People have tried to find it. I've heard argued that the redeeming factor of Drusilla’s story is that she is happy, when Angel gave her eternal life in order to punish her forever. That may be true, but it seems very, very tiny considering that she has become the very “evil thing” that she was desperate to avoid. Another fan, after pointing out accurately that Dru can’t be a survivor because she’d dead, argued that Dru was…I don’t remember her exact wording, but because Dru just existed. Continued. She remains Drusilla.

Except she wasn’t always Drusilla. We don’t know her human name, but if it was Drusilla I’ll eat my hats. Whoever that girl was, perhaps she wasn’t completely and utterly destroyed, she does still exist as that monster, but she was transformed into the thing she least wanted to be. There is no redemption for her.

And that’s horrifying.

And yet...maybe those fans aren't so wrong. Drusilla is dead, to be sure - but also not. She still exists. She’s not miserable. Angel has turned her into what he wanted her to be. He made her, he designed her. She was, indeed, his art.
But she’s not…she’s not forced, not anymore. She makes her own decisions. “I could pick the wisest and bravest knight in all the land - and make him mine forever with a kiss.” And she does.

She’s insane. Angel and Darla made her insane. They took her sanity and they made her a monster - but they don’t control her. She’s not a prisoner. She’s a very different being now, she’s the “thing” she didn’t want to be. What happened to her was not her choice. As others have pointed out, Dru is the only one of the fanged four who does not get some form of redemption…because she does not need redemption. She’s a victim. An eternal victim.

Dru is a monster, but she is a monster who makes her own decisions about what to do. Angel and Darla can’t, for example, keep her from vamping Darla again. She’s the monster, now, and they are the victims. Dru is out of her mind, but her insanity is hers. She has visions and she says things that make no sense and Angel and Darla can never understand. She’s a Cassandra who has no desire to be understood. She loves. She loves “quite well. If not wisely.” She’s not the young woman who begged Angel to help her be good. And yet…"In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed." Drusilla is her own being, her own independent agent.

I'm rewatching Torchwood season one for the first time in several years. I'm half an hour into Cyberwoman, and have some thoughts:

1. S1 has been better than I remembered so far...but not Cyberwoman. I think I'm going to walk away with my same opinion: Worst TV episode that I have ever watched in full.

2. Watching the episode, Eve Myles is so much more talented than Gareth David Lloyd that it grates.

3. Lisa's revealing outfit is unnecessary and gross. The way doctor inappropriate feeling up of her is unbelievably unnecessary and gross.

4. Ianto and Lisa have no chemistry. None at all. The episode would have a shot at being decent if they had chemistry.

5. Ianto does have a bit of chemistry with Jack - and I'm convinced they're already sleeping together. Jack has a gun to Ianto's head demanding to know why Ianto put them all in huge danger. Ianto retorts by accusing Jack of not caring about him on a personal level - and Jack is moved enough by this to put the gun away. They must have been sleeping together. Exchange doesn't make sense to me otherwise.

6. We get no sense of Lisa as a person. I recall being irritated at fandom for usually only caring about Lisa in terms of how she affected Ianto's relationship with Jack...but I can kinda get where they are coming from.