Torchwood stuff

[osprey_archer]

Just watched 2.11: Adrift. I’m annoyed that they arranged the episode in order to prove Jack right. Because really, if one of your loved ones disappeared into the Rift and came out screaming endlessly, wouldn’t you rather know about it than spend the next fifty years of your life scouring crowd videos in case you saw his face? I would. I think there’s a very good argument that Jack’s secret asylum is very, very wrong, which the writers totally threw out the window.

Also, I may be the only person on the planet here, but Ianto and Jack's relationship really does not strike me as quite so healthy. Interesting, yes. Fluffable? Not so much.

Still. I’m two episodes from the end. The problem with watching television shows after the fact is that you end up being spoiled for everything. I’m kind of trapped between wanting to stop watching Torchwood at the point where everyone is still more or less alive, and knowing that I have to see it through to the bitter end.

This is part of the reason why there is not so much new Torchwood fic lately. I’m working on something! Really! Which is almost finished. Tea and Sympathy, part 4, not so much.

But this below has been sitting on my hard drive for a while, so I thought I would share.


Torchwood: the Snarkfest Episode Guide, part 1.



Episode 1

Jack offers Gwen a job.

Gwen: But you have no idea if I’m qualified.

Jack: It’s a top secret job where you save the world daily. What possible qualifications could you need?

Gwen: ….

Jack: I don’t hire people for competence. I hire people that I think are hot.

Gwen: In that case, how can I refuse?

Episode 2

Gwen unleashes the Evil Alien Sex Apparition of Doom.

Jack: Thank God, she’s incompetent enough to fit in. I was worried for a minute I might have hired a competent one by mistake.

Tosh: I’m competent.

Jack: You’ll get over it.

Ianto: I’m competent!

Everyone ignores him, because he needs a reason to go berserk eventually. Jack saves Cardiff by being a sex god.


Episode 3

Owen: I am the masked avenger! Rah!

Also, Jack gives Gwen weapons training.

Ianto: Is that what they’re calling it these days?

Jack: Nothing is sexy like a euphemism.


Episode 4

Ianto unleashes his Evil Cyber Girlfriend on the world. Accidentally? Well, sort of.

Ianto: You all ignore me! All the time! You never remember my birthday! Or our anniversary! Or—

Jack: Ianto, you make us coffee and do janitorial stuff. We’re not required to forge a deep emotional connection with you for that.

Everyone except Ianto shoots the cyborg and the world is saved.


Episode 5

Tiny small children, fairies, and CGI are all evil.


Episode 6

Team Torchwood nearly gets eaten by cannibals. Jack saves them. Why is it that even in a British TV show the American is the only competent special agent?

Once they’ve returned to the Hub:

Jack: Right then, everyone, weapons training!

Everyone: All of us? Together?

Jack: It will be fun! Team bonding!

Gwen and Owen, at least, decide that weapons training is a good idea.

Comments

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

Nothing is sexy like a euphemism.

After season two ended, I sat around for about 20 minutes being annoyed at the writers for not dropping one episode all together in order to make the finale a two-parter.

New fic? Because I just got really, really excited.

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

That episode really bothered me for the same reasons. Jack =/= infallible. Seriously.

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

your snarkfest is astonishingly accurate.

it's troublesome, because i went into torchwood expecting Great Things. or at least Good Things. or at least exciting Jack/Ianto-ness. But found none of these? I don't know, for a show that seems to give a lot of taboo things tv time, they really don't develop that relationship, which i found surprising + sad.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Hee. It was fun to write.

Oh, dear. Going into Torchwood expecting anything, even the giddy heights of mediocrity, is a really good way to be disappointed.

How many episodes have you watched? The Jack/Ianto-ness doesn't start for a while. In defense of how little development it gets, none of the relationships in Torchwood get developed very well. The only thing that gets a lot of screen time is the DEATH theme.

And despite all the screen time it gets, DEATH isn't developed well, either. *sighs* Oh Torchwood, how I wish you were a quality show.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

He shouldn't be infallible, but the writers of Torchwood have evidently decided that he is. :( :( :( It doesn't bother me that he knows more than the average bunny. It's just that when he starts being supersmart AND precognizant AND a font of moral authority that he drives me crazy.

Plus he kept getting heroic camera angles and lighting all through the episode. Oh, that was exasperating.

I went on for three paragraphs and then decided it deserved its own post, because an explication of Jack Harkness cannot be contained in a comment.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Which episode would you have cut?

I would have cut the whole Owen dying thing, but that's because I like Owen and not because I have a real quality reason.

As for the fic, one of them is almost done and one needs a read-through because I wrote it in one night, and I also don't know where to post it because it's Ianto/evil!Jack. Sort of.

Is there anything you're particularly interested in seeing? I take requests if they aren't too long or too smutty.

[blush-violently.livejournal.com]

ITA with the snarkiness and general annoyances. Especially with the poorly developed relationships. I expected some more Janto, but all of a sudden Jack would be all into Gwen and it just got a little clunky/weeeeird.

As much as I would've enjoyed seeing a little Tosh/Owen - there really wasn't much to write home about. Just a nice scene at the end of "a day in the death", but that wasn't backed up with any additional Tosh/Owenness.

Except the dancing in "something borrowed". That was good.

Yay new fic coming! Can I request some Owen/Ianto H/C tea-niverse goodness? :)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's a new person! Hello!

Expecting Jack to be faithful is probably too much to ask of him. *sighs*

As for the tea-niverse (that name amuses me) it's reached the point where Owen needs to start getting better. However, there may be a short fic where Ianto somehow destroys the coffee machine.

It's a very traumatizing experience for him. Poor boy.

[blush-violently.livejournal.com]

crap, not the coffee machine!

*snicker* that could be traumatic and hella funny. ^_^

This has always bugged me: is the coffee machine an espresso machine? Because I had the impression Jack drank mostly drip coffee so that would be in a french press or ... you know a drip coffee machine. Espresso is a completely different bag.

I'm a barista, so this stuff keeps me up at night. This and caffine.

anywho - ramble.

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

Ideally, Owen would have survived everything. I'm so fond of him that I actually teared up each of the three times he was shot.

I would have cut From Out of the Rain altogether (well, rewritten it and moved it to the third season), moved A Day in the Death toward the end of the season, and expanded Fragments into a two-parter.

As far as preferences, I'm giddy that you write good Owen/Ianto. I don't think they're realistic as far as a traditional OTP, but I do think their dynamic is really interesting. I've been rooting for the two of them since the first season. Although if you feel like going that way, it's always nice to see Owen as the competent doctor and potential care-taker.

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

i quite agree.

well, i watched all of season one, basically. and then i was like, where did the jack/ianto ship go? when did THAT happen? (besides that one conversation about the stopwatch and the actually good second kiss). so i read up on a lot of it on wikipedia, and watched clips, and stuff... and there was just very little there, you know?)

i do rather agree about this DEATH thing. despite everyone's shock over the show having (*gasp*) bisexaul themes, it seems to me like the most controversial thing, as far as it's blatancy and stuff, is the mass existentialism portrayed. in *most* of the season one episodes someone is going "do things now! because death means nothing!" etc.

ok, they might have been a little more eloquent than me there. but really, just about as subtle.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I actually don't drink coffee (yes, I know, writing Ianto without the influence of coffee = sacrilege) and I have nooooo idea how the coffee machine might work.

Does this affect how it might blow up? Because I think it would be more traumatizing if it blew up due to operator error than infestation by alien spoors or something.

Is barista a good job? I've been looking for summer jobs.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

No, really, I think the eloquency was about comparable. :)

Oh, God, Torchwood's existentialism. That's really a post on its own.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone at Torchwood really works as an OTP--they're all way too messed up. Which doesn't bother me, because reading OTP things is sometimes just a little too much like reading a romance novel.

Would you be willing to beta something?

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to beta anything, but I should warn you. When someone asks me to beta, I always drop the standard disclaimer of "I'm really not a nice person. If I think it's bad, I'll say so" and everyone always says that's exactly what they're looking for.

This girl that I'd read for before sends me a new fic, asking specifically if it's fit for public consumption. I send her back more critique than she sent me fic, summarizing that it's going to take some work. Not only did she not respond to my hard work or even post the story as it was, she actually removed me from her friendslist. I'm a little proud. So, yeah, fair warning.

Love to read for you though. :)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

o_O.

Well, I won't say that's exactly what I want, but it's probably what I need, so I will swallow the bitter, bitter pill of criticism.

At least you warn people up front. I once read a paper for a girl and told her something like, "You basically need to rewrite this entirely. No, scratch that, you need to come up with an actual thesis and some actual supporting evidence and write an entirely new paper."

Amazingly, she still speaks to me. But I have been informed that she thinks I'm terrifying.

Where do you want me to send it?

[visualthinker11.livejournal.com]

hah, well, thank you. i think, perhaps.

too true. and also worth a post(ing)- my friend just sent me this link, which COMPLETLEY and TOTALLY made my day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRk7USidcYE
i think i might go watch it again, just because their captain jack is so hilarious...

[blush-violently.livejournal.com]

No coffee? ah well, to each his/her own.

Barista-ing is ok. I enjoy learning about coffee and how to make it well. Plus foam-art = fun.

But it's still customer service which can be annoying as hell. Starbucks is an ok place to work (except they have the push button espresso machines. bad sbux, bad!), but somewhere smaller where they physically pull their own shots would prolly be more fun.

ummm. If Ianto uses an espresso machine like a La Marzocco, possible explosions could be due to malfunctioning steam wand. There's a lot of pressure that comes out of the wand, so if it was damaged the results could be fairly spectacular. Steam shooting out of various places, etc.

Also that particular machine is known to get flooded with hot water when making a lot of drinks in a row.

Anywho. Now you've got me thinking about how to break my coffee maker(s).
:/

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

I'm not really that mean, the fic was just shoddily put together.

jonesk6 at gmail is fine.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. The coffee machine floods after Ianto makes himself half a dozen espressos so he can sort out his feelings for Owen (I don't know why it's related, but...), he hits it, the steam wand malfunctions somehow and the machine shoots steam out everywhere.

And then Ianto gets burned and has to be doctored. :( Poor Ianto.

And he's all scarred because he hurt the coffee machine, the only thing in Torchwood that consistently appreciates him.

I can work with that.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Right then. I've sent it.

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

yay!

I won't have a chance to look at it until tomorrow night, but it's been received.

::digs out printer::

[blush-violently.livejournal.com]

heeheehee. I like it.

Steam burns hurt like a bitch, too.

A good Ianto/Owen/La Marzocco fic.

^_^