FIC: Torchwood (drabble) - Hold Me Tight

Title: Hold Me Tight
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, Toshiko Sato
Challenge: tw100, challenge: open, challenge: beatles titles
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Spoilers for Torchwood episode 2x12, "Fragments". Cross-posted to my Dreamwidth account, my lj, tw100, toshiko_sato, and to my fanfiction journal.

( Hold Me Tight )

Supernatural: what went wrong?

abrakadabrah pointed me to an interesting commentary on the fifth season of Supernatural by karenmiller.

I'm still mulling it over.

I had thought the feasons for the change in the show, and the loss of quality, were (1) they lost Kim Manners, and (2) Eric Kripke lost interest in the story and consequently lost his sense of direction - in both senses of the word. He's already proved that he can tell a strong story, but suddenly stopped doing so. karenmiller thinks they lost faith in their own story, which is perhaps a different way of saying the same thing. Faith in our own creativity gives us direction. Lack of faith gives us George R.R. Martin. Stories that ramble, unravel.

At first, I thought it was a cool idea, to hold an Apocalypse and no one notices. That would have worked... If we'd had more coherency of storyline and character. I was riveted by season four. I was committed. Season Five is just too random, and I've gone from something close to fannish obsession, to paying almost no attention and not much caring any more. Breaks of many weeks between episodes don't help.

Now, for me, Castiel was the biggest draw, at least, before I fell in love with Dean Winchester. But the dangerous, conflicted angel of season four seems to have turned into comic relief. Disappoints me more than all the rest, maybe. And Dean is no longer the Dean of season four.

Can the show reclaim my interest? I hope so, but I'm afraid to hope too much.

After all, I remember what happened to X-Files.

Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake...

I read Batgirl #8 today.

I read the first few issues of Batgirl because I loved Stephanie Brown. I discovered her when she was Robin, way back when, and thought she was terrific. All the sparky humour of the young Dick Grayson, all the courage and skill, but female. The comic-smitten eight-year-old I once was, was leaping up and cheering.

But then Steph got a few ups and downs - mostly downs - after Batman so unfairly dismissed her. Don't get me started: I could rant, and have been known to do so. It won't be the first time a female superhero was screwed up by her writers (not to mention screwed over) but I'd like to think we were past writing the female characters as losers and twits. Steph had such potential.

Then she reappeared as Batgirl, and my excitement was trepidatious. Batgirl has never been a character who intersted me. Betty Kane was an example of what was wrong in comics in the 1960s, as far as I was concerned; there has never been a Batgirl I really liked until The Killing Joke, when Barbara Gordon was ultimately redeemed and became a fascinating character just as she ceased to be Batgirl forever. Oracle is still interesting. Batgirl? Well, no. I never liked Cassandra Cain at all.

So now Batgirl is Steph, and the first two issues didn't thrill me. Full of teen angst and Steph agonizing over whether she could or should become Batgirl - would a boy in her position be given the same introspective self-doubt, I asked rhetorically, and concluded that yes, he would be. But he'd still probably have action-packed adventures at the same time, and as far as I could tell, Steph wasn't doing much of anything: her main antagonist was Barbara Gordon, who didn't think Steph should risk herself as Batgirl, a situation that said more about Barbara Gordon than about Steph Brown. So I stopped reading.

But this issue starts a crossover with Red Robin, and it was a light week for Marvel, so I couldn't resist, and I'm happy to say that the writing on this one was snappy and smart, the plot was fun, the characterization just the way I like it, and the story featured a character I love but whom we seldom see in Bat-titles: Dr. Leslie Thompkins. Kudos to the writer, Bryan O. Miller.

Nice art, too, from Talent Caldwell. The characters don't look quite the way I like them, but they have style and spirit.

...And banter in the best Batman style.

John Barrowman..

Another wonderful thing happened today: the new John Barrowman CD arrived in the mail.

And I love it.

Some of the songs are old favourites ("Memory", "My Eyes Adored You") and some are songs I never liked before - but somehow Barrowman can make me enjoy even "Copacabana", which must be a minor miracle. I'm not sure even he can make me enjoy "You'll Never Walk Alone", but he makes me dislike it less than with other singers.