(no subject)
How is Sunday almost over already? Lunch at the parents, cuddled my niece & gave her the plush feel book I'd bought & which she was absolutely fascinated with, especially since two of the pages had some kind of plastic inside that rustles when you touch them. ::beaming proud aunt mode:: Also realised that I need to memorise some child-appropriate songs, because at the moment when I carry her around when she gets bored and disgruntled I'm mostly singing/humming nin to her, since these are the only songs I know more than 25% of the lyrics to; I do it in a very positive tone of voice, and she did seem to be intrigued by my extremely off-key version of The Great Below but it still feels kind of weird and just can't be ideal, atmosphere-wise...
Finished the Torchwood DVDs in a mini-binge [2008? nine months? ::sigh::], and on the whole really enjoyed seeing the series again - I wasn't entirely sure for the first few episodes, and it's a sad thing that you can never quite recapture that initial burst of fanish enthusiasm, but generally it stood the test of re-watching very well and the emotional intensity of Cyberwoman pulled me right back into it, after which it gets constantly better and starts to run more smoothly.
And I love everything from Random Shoes to End of Days. The tension really starts to build up with Out of Time - I love that episode, the parallel arc of Jack and Owen that starts here and ends with the hug in the finale. Owen's raw vulnerability in the first night with Diane, totally overwhelmed and already very much out of his depths; I think that's the first time we're really seeing the hard mask slip. Jack opening up to John so easily, and again it's like a mask being taken away, only the thing Jack uses as a mask is his charm. The scene in the car is one of the most heart-breaking and surprising (would never have happened on an American show) moments I've seen on any tv show, and Jack's look at the end is awful, the emptiness, the hopelessness. I really like the dark streak in Jack that emerges over those episodes. That's something I hadn't really been fully aware of, because I didn't know Jack's back-story when I first saw the show; how much he doesn't want to be there. Two hundred years, and maybe he's gone native a bit, but he's got a hand in a jar that's probably worth more to him than almost anything at Torchwood and a fondness for standing in high, conspicuous places, waiting to picked up again, to be able to travel through the universe again instead of being marooned on this planet, stuck in an era he doesn't particularly like, picking through the debris of all that is out there, out of his reach. I wonder what they're going to do with this in the second series, what is going to convince Jack to come back/stay, because he obviously is very ready to leave at the drop of the right hat.
[And then there's this half-written, extremely rambling and very much tl;dr post about the Jack/Ianto relationship ... ::sigh::]
[On a side-note, though, what I don't quite understand is the whole OMG!adult!sex!violence! hype. Or the complaints about that. Compared to Dr. Who, which I've only seen a few episodes of so far, maybe, but on a grander scale of things? Not so much. Not that I'm complaining, mind. But If you leave aside the feeding-on-orgasms alien in Day One, which was clearly done with a bit of a wink at the audience and not to be taken deadly serious, pun not intended, there are exactly two a little more explicit sex scenes in one single episode, and they're anything but gratuitous, but crucial to the plot and Owen's character development. Countrycide was gory and a bit extreme, but I've seen as bad, if not worse, on the X-Files or CSI. Either Buffy or Angel had more explicit violence and sex than the average TW episode...]
Finished the Torchwood DVDs in a mini-binge [2008? nine months? ::sigh::], and on the whole really enjoyed seeing the series again - I wasn't entirely sure for the first few episodes, and it's a sad thing that you can never quite recapture that initial burst of fanish enthusiasm, but generally it stood the test of re-watching very well and the emotional intensity of Cyberwoman pulled me right back into it, after which it gets constantly better and starts to run more smoothly.
And I love everything from Random Shoes to End of Days. The tension really starts to build up with Out of Time - I love that episode, the parallel arc of Jack and Owen that starts here and ends with the hug in the finale. Owen's raw vulnerability in the first night with Diane, totally overwhelmed and already very much out of his depths; I think that's the first time we're really seeing the hard mask slip. Jack opening up to John so easily, and again it's like a mask being taken away, only the thing Jack uses as a mask is his charm. The scene in the car is one of the most heart-breaking and surprising (would never have happened on an American show) moments I've seen on any tv show, and Jack's look at the end is awful, the emptiness, the hopelessness. I really like the dark streak in Jack that emerges over those episodes. That's something I hadn't really been fully aware of, because I didn't know Jack's back-story when I first saw the show; how much he doesn't want to be there. Two hundred years, and maybe he's gone native a bit, but he's got a hand in a jar that's probably worth more to him than almost anything at Torchwood and a fondness for standing in high, conspicuous places, waiting to picked up again, to be able to travel through the universe again instead of being marooned on this planet, stuck in an era he doesn't particularly like, picking through the debris of all that is out there, out of his reach. I wonder what they're going to do with this in the second series, what is going to convince Jack to come back/stay, because he obviously is very ready to leave at the drop of the right hat.
[And then there's this half-written, extremely rambling and very much tl;dr post about the Jack/Ianto relationship ... ::sigh::]
[On a side-note, though, what I don't quite understand is the whole OMG!adult!sex!violence! hype. Or the complaints about that. Compared to Dr. Who, which I've only seen a few episodes of so far, maybe, but on a grander scale of things? Not so much. Not that I'm complaining, mind. But If you leave aside the feeding-on-orgasms alien in Day One, which was clearly done with a bit of a wink at the audience and not to be taken deadly serious, pun not intended, there are exactly two a little more explicit sex scenes in one single episode, and they're anything but gratuitous, but crucial to the plot and Owen's character development. Countrycide was gory and a bit extreme, but I've seen as bad, if not worse, on the X-Files or CSI. Either Buffy or Angel had more explicit violence and sex than the average TW episode...]