FIC: Torchwood (drabble) - Faith

Title: Faith
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Doctor/Jack
Challenge: tw100, challenge: supernatural reverse fandom
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: No spoilers, except maybe vague ones for the Doctor Who episode "Utopia". Cross-posted to my LJ and to tw100.

( Faith )

Blood, love and rhetoric...

auriaephiala sent me a link to this essay, quite rightly thinking I'd find it interesting.

And now I'm pondering the question of 'blood' and whether I think she's right. Or whether Stoppard is right. My first thought was 'no', certainly in the way she defines 'blood' - i.e., that blood=conflict, and without conflict you don't have a story. But my first reading of 'blood' was of physicality, visceral feelings, instincts. Different slant entirely.

I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory — they’re all blood, you see.

So can I think of stories, good stories, that have love and rhetoric without the blood? Jane Eyre? No, the first Mrs Rochester had to die before Jane and Mr Rochester could resolve their love. The Game of Kings? Sure, there's lots of blood, there's a war and duels and stabbings in the back, but I was thinking of that of peripheral - the story and its resolution are quite different - but then I remembered the scene with Richard in the clearing, which could never have happened if Lymond hadn't been physically shot and in extremis; and it was Lymond's stabbing of Janet Beaton (however incidental that may have been!) that set everything into motion in the first place. So. Yes. Blood.

And of course if you take 'blood' to include 'blood relationships', it's the core of the whole Lymond opus and the Nicholas books besides.

Is blood central to the Bujold novels? Blood-ties, yes, including that of clones. War and its connotations of killing is central to most of the Vorkosigan novels... Memory in particular, where the action of the story centres on the fact that Miles killed someone (even if his victim survived) and failed to reveal his full crime.

And if you follow the train of thought, that blood, in the sense of our physicality, and blood in the sense of our bloodlines and families, and blood in the sense of our conflicts and/or our fear of conflict and of death... If blood is identity, then all stories are about blood.

I think this may be an elegant restating of the idea that all stories are about sex and death. "Blood" covers both categories rather nicely.

But I think all stories are about identity.

Nice day...

Went to Costco with maaseru and bought nothing. Nothing! Very proud of myself. Well, I did eat a hot dog.

Baked a carrot cake from scratch. That was fun, particularly the cream cheese icing. It was a birthday cake for josanpq, whose birthday was last week.

Then josanpq came over and she and I and maaseru and maaboroshi and I all played the Lord of the Rings edition of Trivial Pursuit. It turned out to be very funny and sometimes goofy and often challenging. Some questions are absurdly easy and some not - for instance, I got, "What was the name of Theoden's niece?" followed by "What was the name of Arwen's horse?" Sometimes we thought the answer on the card was wrong - for instance, it said that only Gandalf had been to the Mines of Moria before The Fellowship of the Ring, but surely Aragorn had been there, too? maaboroshi really impressed us by knowing that it was October 24 when Frodo woke up in Rivendell; she confessed it was because that is her brother's birthday. Then I got the question of "What time of day was it?" I threw up my hands in despair.

Whenever Haldir's name came up we shouted "Shiny!" because he's a favourite (and oh so shiny).

maaboroshi won the game. I came second. The budgies ran a running commentary. They seemed to enjoy the game, too.

Over supper, we watched the third episode of Merlin. It didn't seem as slashy as the first two, but was fun anyway.

I didn't finish the story I'm working on, though, and tomorrow it looks as if I'll have no time at all.

(no subject)

From fannish5: List 5 old school fandoms that should (or should not) get a big budget movie reboot.

1. The Professionals.
No, I don't want a reboot there - I want the show, just about perfect as it was, to be available again. I want it to be rerun, I want it to appear on the cable channels, I want it to be in the stores in Region 1 DVDs. I want it to be repopularized and revived.

Alternately, if there should be some sort of reboot (and let's forget The New Professionals, shall we?), its ongoing theme should be the hard-boiled romance of Bodie and Doyle. Which is, of course, what it always was, but it should be more in focus this time.


2. Firefly
. Yes, it got its glossy movie version, and I didn't much like the glossy movie version, not compared to the wonderful TV show. It should have had more than 13 episodes and it should have thrived. It's too late for a continuation now, but I mourn its passing.

And they shouldn't try to do it without Wash.

A reboot with other actors, other characters? Unthinkable.


3. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. Done seriously as spy thrillers.


4. Global Frequency
, to name a show that never got its first run, let alone a second one. Someone should have seen the potential. Michelle Forbes! It could have been brilliant.


5. Space Rangers
. Remember that one? Linda Hunt and a squad of emergency cops on a frontier planet. Made only fifteen years ago, and it looks archaic now, with cliche dialogue ("Let's get out of here!") and shallow, formulaic writing - but it had a certain charm, good characters, and some ideas that deserved better treatment.