mythtaken

Fic: Five Things That Came Through the Rift Torchwood Didn't Destroy for the Good of Humanity

2008-08-14T14:51:00.002+01:00

Pairing: Gen mostly, but with a wee bit of Jack/Ianto and a hint of Owen/OC.
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of innuendo.
Spoilers: For 2.13 - Exit Wounds
Summary: Not everything Torchwood deals with is dangerous.
Disclaimer: Torchwood is outside the government, beyond the UN and far, far away from being mine.

Five Things That Came Through the Rift Torchwood Didn't Destroy for the Good of Humanity

[ mood | productive ]

del.icio.us, dark knight, deals, depeche mode, draught

2008-08-02T21:22:00.002+01:00

1. Is it just me or does anyone else take a perverse pleasure in constant painstaking refinement of the organisation of their del.icio.us links?

2. The Dark Knight is excellent, though mostly about as much fun as being stabbed in the face. The female characters once again get short shrift and I was so very happy to find Origin Story, a fanfic by minim_calibre that she'd written in response to Jim Gordon's daughter (future BATGIRL for goodness sake) barely getting a look-in. Also, I like to imagine the Joker attends these:

3. The following is an annotated extract from an Amazon email I got the other day (I am probably far more amused by its unintentional accuracy than is strictly necessary):

(Obviously Dean SHOULD have sold his soul on Demon eBay, that's been established (at least in fic), but failing that, perhaps Damnazon Marketplace?)

4. Depeche Mode are made of win covered in awesomesauce. Never Let Me Down Again is an entirely perfect slice of '80s new romantic/synthpop/electronica/wossname, and it's totally about Dean and Sam Winchester. Oh yes it is.

5. Why don't they sell ginger beer on draught in pubs? It's much nicer than that hop-based stuff.

[ mood | thoughtful ]
[ music | Depeche Mode - I Feel You ]

In which I watch a Rob Schneider film and hurtle into an abyss of self loathing

2008-07-26T12:09:00.005+01:00

Even though I've had an eminently respectable Werner Herzog film out on rental for ages now, last night for some reason I decided to watch Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - which isn't just a bad film but a SEQUEL to a bad film. And it was so thunderingly, bizarrely horrible that once I'd started watching I SIMPLY COULDN'T STOP.

I have only myself to blame. I could have switched it off after the first two minutes when Deuce is impelled to visit his ex-pimp in Amsterdam because he's trying to lay low having inadvertantly caused a TERRIBLE CETACEAN DISASTER. Or a bit later when TJ the pimp is worried people will think he's gay because he keeps getting caught looking at DEAD MEN'S PENISES. Or when Deuce has to start whoring again in order to investigate the gigolo murders and takes out a woman whose mother worked at Chernobyl and who was born with a PENIS instead of a nose, and I'm assuming she has a little pair of FACIAL GONADS as well because, well, you can guess what happens when she sneezes. Or when another client of Deuce's turns out to be a woman with no larynx who is somehow able to geiser wine out of her TRACHEOSTOMY. Or when I discovered that Deuce's pretty Dutch love interest is played by a woman who is LITERALLY YOUNG ENOUGH to be Rob Schneider's DAUGHTER. Or when TJ drops some chips in a toilet but decides to eat them anyway and then a cat comes in and SAVAGES HIS BALLS.

BUT I DIDN'T SWITCH IT OFF.

I sat through every damn knob, tit and fart joke. Every gag about Asian men's penises being small (which is a stereotype I'd heard of but never actually seen deployed), or how funny it is when men get sexually assaulted by women (or by other men. In prison), or people accidentally eating SPUNK because someone just sneezed it into their soup. HA HA! And Oded Fehr was in it for all of two minutes - which is a ridiculously short amount of time for Oded Fehr to be in something - and most of that time he spent CHOKING. And then it did that thing that ALL American gross-out sex-comedies do, which is to have a completely incongruous sweetly conservative unsubtle message. Deuce is kind of a spod and probably a hopeless lover, but women like him because he TOTALLY ASKS THEM ABOUT THEIR DAY and is all nice to them and shit. And it's sweet and NOT AT ALL CREEPY that he carries his dead wife's prosthetic leg around with him and encourages his clients to get boob jobs.

And I sat there and I watched it and I watched it and I didn't watch the eminently respectable Werner Herzog film that I've had out on rental for AGES NOW and I marvelled at how much skill and time and effort had gone into making this HORRIBLE FILM and I hated Rob Schneider and I hated Adam Sandler but most of all I hated MYSELF.

[ mood | cynical ]
[ music | Kula Shaker - Sound of Drums

Extreme snogging

2008-07-23T23:06:00.002+01:00

This is just the best music video ever:

[ mood | happy ]

Doctor Who 4x13 - Journey's End

2008-07-05T21:30:00.002+01:00

My initial reactions went something like this:

(Minor spoilers and copious exclamation marks follow)

Yay Mickey! Yay Jackieeeee!

Yay Jack!

Yay Sarah Jane!

Yay Martha!

Yay Rose!

Yay Doctors!

YAY! DONNA!!! DOCTOR DONNA!!!

Yay "I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now!"

Yay Donna!

Yay Martha and Mickey joining Torchwood!

Yay Donna!

Yay Rose getting a (sort of) happy ending!

Yay Donna!

Nooooooooooo!!! DONNAAAAAAAAAA!!!

*fires up BBC iPlayer to watch again*

[ mood | enthralled ]

That's it. I'm done.

2008-06-17T14:35:00.003+01:00

I have found Supernatural/A Series of Unfortunate Events crossover fanfiction!

MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE.

[ mood | happy ]
[ music | Legoline - The Supernatural Withdrawal Song ]

Is anyone else amused

2008-06-16T12:45:00.003+01:00

...that the volume on the BBC iPlayer goes up to 11?

[ mood | amused ]

In which I witter about Supernatural

2008-05-27T14:11:00.001+01:00

So, thanks to a typo in his contract, Dean Winchester's gone to Hull, right?

Right?

Come on, there could be dramatic potential in Sam having to rescue Dean from East Yorkshire.

*ponders concept of Hullbound: Hullraiser II*

Sigh. At some point while rewatching the second half of season 1 and the first half of season 2 I became a little obsessed with Supernatural.

Alright, a lot obsessed.

Alright, I started reading Wincest when I ran out of episodes. *facepalm*

And I've been mainlining so much imagery and commentary and fic since season 3 finished that Dean and Sam are now making regular appearances in my dreams. I don't believe things have been this bad since the heady days of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanaticism. Which is ironic because I ignored Supernatural for ages for the sole reason that I'd read discussions of its problematic treatment of women, framed to suggest a conscious backlash against BtVS (Now BtVS, at its most basic level, was of course about subverting the horror movie cliché of the blonde girl victim, and sure enough Supernatural - in its very first episode - has not one but two blonde women meeting horrible ends in order to further the plot and motivate our two (male) protagonists). And - given that - it's doubly ironic my fannishness has reached critical mass now, when SPN fandom is currently exploding over the subject of misogyny in the series.

The seemingly constant use of gendered insults against women this season has certainly bothered me (to the point where, despite generally liking Dean and disliking Ruby, it made me ridiculously happy when the latter called the former a dick), and the lack of any real female allies means we've had less good stuff to balance out the nastiness. I think it's important that in previous seasons, not only did we have recurring female allies in the form of Ellen and Jo, we also got a number of women whose situations explicitly paralleled that of either Sam or Dean in some way, and with whom our protagonists clearly identified as a result. I can't really think of any examples of this happening in season 3 off the top of my head.

Still, for the most part, my enjoyment has outweighed my frustrations (which is more than I can say for Torchwood this year, but that's another post) and I'll be watching season 4. I don't seem to be able to look away at the moment.

[ mood | geeky

OMGWTFEARTHQUAKE!

2008-02-27T12:57:00.003Z

Oh, that's what that was?

I thought I'd had a funny turn or something.

[ mood | giddy ]

Five fun things I discovered this week

2007-11-05T14:15:00.000Z

Graham Linehan, comedy genius, has a blog.
The Ally Pally bonfire night celebration is possibly the best one ever, since not only is it lovely in itself, but its position on Mill Hill means that all of London is spread out below you, and hence you get to see hundreds of firework displays for the price of one.
Practical jokery can actually be amusing when it approaches performance art rather than singling out an individual of whom to make unsuspecting fun.
Superman has been a dick since his inception.
A glossary of words from 18th century English provincial dialects. I found this while researching the word "shrammed" (meaning really cold, as in "my feet are shrammed"), because my sister's boyfriend had never heard it before and refused to believe it existed. My grandfather used it all the time. Turns out it's specifically Wiltshire vocabulary.

[ mood | lethargic ]

Brief comments on Doctor Who Series 3

2007-07-04T18:31:00.000+01:00

Isn't that just like me? A whole series of Doctor Who has come and gone since I last blogged properly. A series which started strongly, wobbled a bit in the middle, peaked again with "Blink" before finally collapsing in on itself like a dying star right at the end.

I can pinpoint the exact moment the cables suspending my disbelief snapped: the bit where it turns out the fruit of Martha's labour is the Doctor turning into Obi-Wan Fairy Jesus.

RTD, you know I love you, but sometimes... Wow.

Also, for the love of all that is holy please stop letting Chris Chibnall write stuff.

[ mood | sore ]

In which Buffy Season 8 continues to be a comic I Simply Must Possess

2007-05-04T11:56:00.000+01:00

Oh, Joss. You fanservicer, you.

Hah!

[ mood | amused ]

Five things off the telly which have particularly tickled me

2007-04-14T14:20:00.000+01:00

A continuity announcer once fluffing her introduction to an episode of the X-Files by speaking of "Muldy and Sculler";
A sketch in Little Britain in which Andy, in his apathy, chooses two copies of the same book to get out from the library;
An advert for oven-ready potato wedges involving two boys trying to go through a doorway at the same time and getting, well, wedged - a visual gag so worn-out I never expected to find it funny, but this one was so perfectly executed it actually made me convulse with laughter, which is rare for me;
Sean Lock, in an episode of QI, suggesting that Stephen Fry has his underpants "made on a loom by exquisite boys";
The incongruous violence of a Dairylea Dunkers advert wherein a stop-motion dinosaur chases a cavewoman, dips her in a tub of soft cheese and bites her head off, only then discovering the little breadsticks also included in the packet and slapping his forehead in "d'oh!" style. I only ever saw this ad the once. I suspect it got complaints.

[ mood | cheerful ]

In which I discover another reason to like the Russell Brand Show

2007-03-26T23:03:00.000+01:00

Looking through Russell Brand photos on Flickr yesterday and I realise that Trevor Lock, who is sometimes on the radio with him, is the very same Trevor who used to help wheel the Golden Grahams trolley in on This Morning With Richard Not Judy and, among various other things, be regularly mocked by Stuart Lee for having a face the wrong size for his head ("There's this band you might like... they're called the Small Faces").

This makes me happy.

Anything I can associate with This Morning With Richard Not Judy makes me happy, really. Because TMWRNJ was a fabulous program. Shambolic, barmy, occasionally brilliant, sometimes a bit crap, but always very funny. I was about 17 when it was on and to me it all seemed delightfully subversive. I mean, the Fist of Fun blokes? Doing a live Sunday morning show? What sublime insanity was this? I was constantly amazed at the stuff they got away with and part of the fun was that they seemed pretty amazed by it too. It was a very gleeful program. Sometimes, I kind of miss it.

[ mood | happy ]

Basic Instinct 2

2007-03-23T23:23:00.001Z

Sex 'n' death in London as Sharon Stone reprises the role of Catherine Tramell.

I'd have been happy to give this one a miss except that Mark Kermode - a critic whose opinions I always find worth listening to, even if he does hate Pirates of the Caribbean - gave it a positive review. Reasoning that it definitely had an edge over the first film, as far as I was concerned, simply by not having Michael Douglas (who I find creepy and horrible even in relatively fluffy fare like Romancing the Stone) in it and that frankly, any film that kills off Stan Collymore in its opening scene couldn't be all bad, I added it to my rental queue.

Well, it turns out that I would much rather look at David Morrissey and his nicely defined stomach muscles than Michael Douglas, so it was certainly not a difficult film in that respect. Sharon Stone clearly has a whale of a time playing Tramell as she slinks about fellating cigarettes and being all ambiguous and icily clever. I do think she's an interesting character; she comes close to veering into the misogynistic archetype of the seductive, manipulative, evil woman, but ultimately escapes it because her ambiguity means the film never judges her. We never find out whether it's her committing the murders and she doesn't receive any sort of "comeuppance". Well, there's a bit where she's nearly drowned in her jacuzzi, and she gets called some vile names, but basically she comes out of that none the worse for wear.

London looks gorgeous in this film, constructed entirely out of metal, sheets of glass and cool, classic stone, it's all sleek office buildings and elegant squares and even the seedy, neon-lit urban decay of the Soho backstreets seems chic in its grubbiness.

Basically this is the sort of film you expect to catch on BBC1 on a Saturday at some ungodly hour of the night, except with a really glossy finish, and Charlotte Rampling being classy. Ultimately silly but pretty enjoyable nonetheless.

[ mood | sleepy ]

Bloody Pirates!

2007-03-22T21:47:00.001Z

Well, the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is up.

I'd like to offer some sort of insightful commentary here but I'm currently too busy making a high-pitched squealing noise not unlike that of a kettle mid-boil.

It's sad really, the depths of fangirlishness this trilogy reduces me to. I am putty in its gunpowdery, barnacle-encrusted hands and I completely want to be Elizabeth Swann when I grow up.

Damn you, Bruckheimer! Can't you just let me have my dignity?

[ mood | bouncy ]

Aargh! Dilemma!

2007-03-15T20:18:00.000Z

Do I start collecting the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic or do I save my money and wait for the trade paperback, even though that'll be ages away yet?

At the moment, logic and reason seem to be winning out over fannish id and I'm leaning towards saving my money. It's been nearly four years since BtVS finished - I've waited this long for official new Joss Whedon-penned canon, I think I can hang on a bit longer.

In which I am dense

2007-03-04T15:53:00.001Z

So I'm waiting at a bus stop in Notting Hill Gate and two women come up and start asking me something in broken English. I think they may have been Spanish; there were a lot of "th" and "hch" sounds. Anyway, the only words I can make out are "Notting Hill" and "door" and "film".

Well, I tend to panic when english-speaking strangers talk to me let alone ones who are struggling to make themselves understood, thus my brain isn't inclined to work too well in such situations, so the only thing I can think is that they're trying to find the local cinema. I say I'm sorry but I don't know, and they thank me and go on their way.

It's not until I'm getting on a bus a few minutes later that I realise they were trying to find Hugh Grant's front door from the film Notting Hill (not that I knew where that was anyway).

God I'm slow sometimes.

For future reference, it seems the main Notting Hill locations were along Westbourne Park Road, near where it crosses Portobello Road. Although, apparently, the actual front door that appears in the film is no longer there. So, sorry possibly-spanish tourist women! I hope you found it in the end and are not still wandering around the back streets of west london, hopelessly lost in the rain.

[ mood | Silly ]

Lost, you are dead to me

2007-02-17T19:20:00.000Z

Dear Lost producers,

I have spent the last two and a half years willingly suspending my disbelief for polar bears in the pacific, sharks with logos stamped on their tails, smoke monsters, cursed numbers, potentially mad French scientists surviving by themselves in the jungle for 16 years, absolutely atrocious Australian accents, imaginary friends, giant electromagnets capable of pulling down aircraft, miracle cures, sinister pet dogs, shared visions, disembodied whispers, weird and elaborate social experiments, time travel, old wooden sailing ships miles inland and many, many other things. But now you have gone too far! You have entered the realm of the impossible and I cannot accept it.

You used the American spelling of "honour" on what is supposed to be a British poster:

No wonder poor Desmond looks so confused:

[ mood | anal ]

ohdeargodherface!

2007-02-05T12:39:00.000Z

Am I just being a complete wimp or does anyone else find the current anti-smoking campaign really, really disturbing?

Bring back the ones where people are addicted to blowing party horns. Please!

*cries*

[ mood | blech ]

The Cybermen are taking over

2007-01-29T20:02:00.000Z

Seen in episode 2x12 of Supernatural:

Spot that?

Yay! A Doctor Who/Supernatural confluence!

[ mood | geeky ]

In which I am resurrected

2007-01-24T11:48:00.000Z

Pathetic! First post of 2007 and January's practically over. This is what happens when, tired of living for the idea of some unspecified future time when everything will be sorted and nice, you suddenly decide that you just can't stand the unfinished nature of your hallway any longer and you set about redecorating the damn thing like you should have done ages ago. A long, lonely but ultimately rewarding process involving the nigh-endless scraping of woodchip (surely the devil's wallpaper), the liberal application of poly-filla, the slapping on of much cheerfully yellow matt emulsion and the accidental inhalation of vast quantities of old paint dust. Also constant vacuuming.

I still have the skirting boards to do, but that's just the icing, even now it's a pleasant, warmly-lit, neutral corridor instead of the depressingly dingy passage it used to be. If I do nothing else in 2007 at least I can say I accomplished that.

Despite such exertions I also seem to have managed, naturally, to pack in plenty of TV-watching over the last few weeks:

Torchwood
Last three episodes of this weren't too bad, the stand-out being Catherine Tregenna's "Captain Jack Harkness", and not just because Jack (finally!) gets some action. The last episode was good in parts - I thought Eve Myles did a cracking job in the scene where she finds Rhys's body for instance - but was let down by some slightly unclear plotting and a bit too much melodrama. I do hope we see Bilis Manger again - there seems to be much more to him than we've seen so far. Other than that, my one wish for series 2 is that we get more episodes from Catherine Tregenna and fewer from Chris Chibnall, who writes nice ensemble scenes but horrible plots.

Supernatural
I avoided this for ages but the steady livejournal buzz convinced me to give it a go. I've caught up on the first season and am now working my way through the second. It's good. Angst, pop culture references and demon hunting all held together by a nicely-played sibling relationship. Plus, I find Jensen Ackles pretty to the point of distraction in this, which is weird because he did nothing for me in Dark Angel, but, I mean, look at him, for god's sake:

How on earth did I miss it before? Look at him there with his eyelashes and his lovely hands and his great big long lens... Hum... What was I going to say? Oh yes! Supernatural, despite being firmly horror rather than science fiction, has some interesting similarities to Torchwood; in fact one episode - "The Benders" - is almost identical to "Countrycide", and I think I'll discuss this in more detail in a later post.

The Office US
I think I love this program. It's really, really delightful. A comparison with the original British version is again a subject for a more in depth post, but for now I'll just say that Jim/Pam pings my One True Pairing meter just as much as Tim/Dawn ever did. And they pinged it hard.

Heroes
Starts on the Sci-Fi channel here soon, which is good 'cause then I can watch it legitimately. I'm enjoying it a lot. Bit like X-Men but with a fate/destiny interconnectedness thing going on. Ensemble shows can get a bit tiring at times but they've kept the pace up well in this so far. I've had a huge soft spot for Greg Grunberg since Alias so I'd probably watch him in this even if it was rubbish, but it's not, plus it's nice to see Clea DuVall in something again.

Ugly Betty
I'd heard really good things about this so I was a bit disappointed when I finally got round to watching it. It does have some positive things going for it but I have a very low tolerance for big, over-the-top sitcom-ish characters and situations (the main reason I gave up watching Desperate Housewives) and I thought the first couple of episodes were a morass of very tired cliches. Not sure about whether I'll continue watching yet.

And since this post has taken me most of the evening to write I'm going to sign off here and watch the most recent episode of Heroes. With any luck it won't be another month before I post again!

[ mood | geeky ]

Forgotten things

2006-11-03T20:56:00.001Z

Bit late for Halloween, but if you're still in the mood for something spooky, you could do a lot worse than check out the hospital hopscotch section at darkpassage.com for explorations of abandoned asylums. Mainly photographs, with a little bit of commentary, it's amazing how creepy the sight of blistered paint and bird shit and discarded wheelchairs can be. Not to mention shots of mouldering underground service tunnels stretching off into utter undisturbed darkness.

I highly advise you to do as I did and view them late at night when you're alone in the house

[ mood | enthralled ]

Transporter 2

2006-10-28T23:22:00.001+01:00

Jason Statham is an actor so relentlessly masculine and uncamp that he goes right round the dial and back into gay. Thus any scene featuring him interacting in some way with another man almost always manages to be deeply homoerotic. Transporter emphasised this by having such things as a fight scene in a garage wherein a ~~topless~~ shirtless Statham tussles with a veritable army of baddies and everyone gets increasingly smeared in spilt engine oil.

Sadly, Transporter 2 doesn't really have anything quite so gloriously slashy, although it has its moments: Statham gets at least part of his shirt ripped away before having his arm dragged through something which may or may not be spilt engine oil, and does fight some baddies off using a hosepipe which eventually swells to rigidity. He also doesn't have sex with a woman.

The story is unimportant, because frankly it's a load of rubbish, all you need to know is that there are baddies, some with vehicles, and Jason will stomp on them, sometimes using a vehicle. There is a henchwoman called Lola who has a gun in each hand and a tattoo at the top of her inner thigh; when she's not shooting people she does things like lick Jason Statham's face, dance around in her underwear and get ogled. She is, in fact, eroticised to the point of utter non-sexiness, a matter not helped by being played, as per usual, by a model cast for her striking looks and not her acting talent.

And yet, I had an unfeasibly good time with Transporter 2. The fight scenes, stunts and set pieces are so wonderfully ludicrous, and pulled off with such conviction, I simply couldn't help but enjoy them.

Jason Statham is also really good at this stuff.

[ mood | lethargic ]
[ music | Erasure - A Little Respect ]

Three come along at once

2006-10-22T16:16:00.001+01:00

*facepalm*

Why do you do this to me BBC? Why? Why have you put Wide Sargasso Sea on BBC1 opposite Torchwood on BBC3? And Fear of Fanny on at the same time as Spooks on Monday?

Now I have to stay up till 1am and catch the repeat if I want to watch Torchwood today. Which I do. And I suppose I'll have to stay up until a similarly ungodly hour later in the week to see Fear of Fanny.

Bah, I say! Bah!

[ mood | frustrated ]