#and beauty either begins to turn into a monster too or has premonitions of it

[toughtink]

what if instead of finishing any stories i just keep coming up with more fairytale retellings? anyway, lesbian beauty and the beast is building itself in my mind, and in this version beauty gets pulled into the curse too so the clock is ticking not only for everyone else but also for her.

[princess-of-the-worlds]

So I watched Enola Holmes on Sunday, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how now with Burn in the movie, we’ve seen most of the cast in Victorian-type costumes. 

We have Burn in this movie. 

We have Barrowman in Fragments. (Ignore the sideburns.)

We have Eve Myles in The Unquiet Dead.

And we have Gareth in Warehouse 13. (And also apparently the Sherlock Holmes movie, but I’ve heard things about it, so we’ll ignore it.)

(Forgive, they’re the best gifs I can find right now, but it’s not really the point of this.)

So that just leaves Naoko. If she’s been in a movie or TV show that had her in a Victorian costume, feel free to let me know; I just personally haven’t seen or heard anything.

Anyways, my point is...Victorian Torchwood AU where the entire team is human? (Kudos to @ultraviolet-eucatastrophe​. I worked out most of this talking to her.)

Hear me out? (Keep in mind that I am neither British, well-versed in British history, or was alive in the 1800s. I’ve kept certain headcanons - like Tosh’s backstory - as vague yet historically possible as I can remember from school.)

This is set some time in the mid- to late nineteenth century/Victorian London.

Jack is like a Scottish lord or noble whose family moved to the US when he was young. After his dad and Gray died - and his mother succumbed to hysteria and became incapable of caring for him, he is left on his own as a teen and turns to crime. He becomes a con artist and thief and earns enough to board a ship to London when he is 19. In London, he meets fellow thief - and grifter - John Hart, and they become partners and lovers before falling out a few years later. Perhaps, Jack meets some mysterious leather-coated gentleman and his beautiful blond companion who, after an adventure, disappears but not before prompting Jack to try living on the legal side. He uses his criminal past and knowledge to consult for Scotland Yard.

Gwen is actually Gwyneth, and after the events of The Unquiet Dead, she blacked out instead of dying. The trauma fucked with most of her memories. She still remembers her name and adopts a variant of it - Gwen Cooper - before fleeing Cardiff for London where she works as a maid in many wealthy households. Her ability allows her to make premonitions that are always correct, and she is able to become a finder of lost items and people for which she is paid a small fee. She chalks this ability up to having keen sense rather than anything supernatural or Rift-related.

Tosh is the genius daughter of a wealthy Japanese businessman frequently visiting London. She spends time growing up sheltered between Japan and the British countryside but eventually grows a rebellious streak and runs away to London. Except she’s kidnapped by a band of men who originally want to sell her into prostitution until they realize how intelligent Tosh really is. They keep her captive for several months, forcing her to build them weapons.

Owen is born in the London slums but is ambitious and sharp enough to want to work his way out. He falls for a good woman, Katie, and eventually becomes a doctor, marrying Katie. They live happily for a few years until Katie dies of a seemingly incurable disease - actually an alien parasite. In his grief, Owen takes to drinking, gambling, and fighting and becomes a back alley doctor, growing a certain repute among the London criminals. One day, after one of their men is stabbed fatally in a fight, the same men who kidnapped Tosh kidnap Owen to operate on their man. Owen meets Tosh, and they bond over a few days. Meeting Owen gives Tosh the courage to finally facilitate the escape she had ben planning, and Owen and Tosh escape to freedom and hide in a flat near where Owen grew up, eventually falling in love.

Ianto belongs to a poor Welsh family and falls in love with Lisa, a local shopkeeper’s adopted ward, but Ianto’s dad disapproves of their interracial relationship and...(well, we know Ianto’s dad’s repute from canon.) To be together, Ianto and Lisa flee to London, but the only place they can find shelter and work is for a crime syndicate run by an imposing woman named Yvonne. Except this syndicate, which is actually a front for Torchwood, which was formed either the same time or a bit earlier depending on when you want to set this AU, and the entirety of the organization burns in a fire of alien-origin. (Only the original base in Scotland and a small outpost in Cardiff remain of Torchwood). Lisa and Ianto barely survive, and Lisa eventually succumbs to her injuries several months later despite Ianto’s best efforts. Ianto, after spending several long months in the London slums, managing to convince a tailor to take him on as an apprentice.

Then one day, a new serial killer begins operating in London. He kills neatly, somehow draining all the bodies of their blood with only a single puncture mark, and his victims are all women, prostitutes and widows and single mothers and the like. Women that no one will notice, that no one will miss.

Except he’s wrong. They are noticed, and they are missed.

Jack, ever so observant, takes notice and starts tracking down this killer. He may not entirely be the Jack Harkness we know and love, but the Doctor and Rose, no matter how brief their acquaintance remained, have inspired him to a good man. He can’t let a monster like this killer stay lurking in the city.

One of the victims is a prostitute who lived in the flat across from Owen and Tosh and never failed to be kind to them, especially Tosh, despite her being Japanese. Tosh and Owen are determined to bring her to justice.

Another of the victims was a runaway from a noble family, and her mother, knowing of Gwen’s repute, begs Gwen to find her.

And finally, poor Ianto happens to be leaving his tailor’s shop too late one night when he spots a struggle in an alley. Ianto, wanting to be wise and live, keeps his head down and walks away, but the next morning, he finds that he had accidentally ignored the killer with his newest victim. The guilt eating away at him, Ianto becomes determined to stop the killer as much as he can.

So all five of them are wandering through the city of London, trying to track down this serial killer. You can imagine they might bump into each other a few times, like Donna and Ten in Partners in Crime. Maybe Ianto grows intrigued of this strange, charming American he keeps meeting and can’t stop thinking about. Tosh and Owen are a bit wary of this quiet Welshwoman who speaks to them as if they’re old friends.

Eventually, Jack, Gwen, Tosh, Owen, and Ianto all corner the killer in a warehouse near the London docks one night except the killer turns out to not be human. The killer is a Plasmavore who has been feeding on all his victim. After a struggle ensues, the Plasmavore is subdued and eventually killed, and the Scotland Yard awards Jack, Ianto, and Owen the reward money for finding the killer.

But this doesn’t sit well with Jack who proposes that the five of them partner to form their own detective team, because they all have unique skills which they bring to the table. And they all realize, putting their heads together, that there exists a form of life that is not entirely human, a form of life beyond this planet. Jack has his Doctor, Gwen has her mysterious past and her ability - which still hasn’t occurred to them to be of similar origins as the creature they encountered yet, and Ianto has Torchwood. 

All five realize that they are better off and more efficient together and that they can be investigators of anything seemingly inhuman and other phantasmagoria. 

Thus, they accidentally become alien crime fighters two centuries too early.

And eventually, they solve enough cases to meet Madam Vastra, Jenny, and Strax and become their allies.

And somehow, they’re always ahead of the other branches of Torchwood to occurrences in London to the point where, on Archie’s suggestion, they actually become the new Torchwood London.

Of course, they have encounters with the Doctor whenever he pops around, and Jack finally gets some answers about his mysterious leather-coated gentleman.

And thus, despite being in a whole different century, and a whole different city, Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Tosh, and Owen still manage to become Torchwood. 

So yeah, there you have it. An entire AU (or at least its origin story) plotted out completely. Now here’s the thing. This idea won’t let me go, but I also can’t do historical AUs. Like, it’s just too much research and plotting involved for me to be satisfying with writing this. That’s why it’s up for grabs. If this sparks your interest and you wanna write, feel free to do so. Just please ask and get my blessing beforehand. (Joking, but please do shoot me a line if you end up writing this.)

Thoughts? 

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

It’s week three of my Global-Pandemic-Induced decision to rewatch all of Supernatural, and so I’m still attempting to make this watch more productive than the last show that I binged.

So I’m on disc two now - that’s episodes 5 - 8 for those of you watching on Netflix. By the time we get to this disc, we know the basic formula for Supernatural as a series - Two Hunks + Fighting Evil to the Power of Acceptable Levels of Gore x Missing Dad = Ratings Gold. Or at the very least, good enough ratings that we’ll give you a season (or fourteen). And then...well...then.

Episode five is “Bloody Mary”, easily the scariest episode of this first season and, based on the nose dive that the formula takes after season 1, probably the entire series. Maybe it’s that the Bloody Mary legend was one that really got me as a kid, maybe it’s just that I don’t do so hot with ghosts, but guys this episode still made me turn on all the lights and avoid all my mirrors. I accidentally turned this episode on at 9pm and regretted it immediately. I walked away at one point to go clean my kitchen to strategically miss some of the spookier points and I walked back in during an even spookier point. I was mad that there were no commercials at the commercial break cut-to-black! The first time I watched this episode, I’m pretty sure I watched it through my fingers. This most recent viewing, I ALSO watched it through my fingers. Guys, THIS EPISODE. 

I will say it a-hecking-gain: This episode scared the SHIT out of me.

AND THEN, THEN! Then this show has the gall to go ahead and drop a major season/character plot point right there in the middle of all this content that I am actively trying not to look at: SURPRISE! Sam has premonition powers and sorta kinda knew that his girlfriend was gonna die a terrible death weeks before she dies. Because sure, why not? 

Ohmiglob the DRAMA.

I’m gonna take a moment to say that, yes, technically this piece of plot gets dropped within our first six episodes, so we can still safely say that, you know, they’re still setting up the story for the rest of the series. It’s not like a sudden twist they drop half way through the season, it’s being laid down as ground work. And I know that this turns out to be a MAJOR issue for the next four seasons at least, but can I just say: Kripke, you’re really throwing a lot at us. I mean, OK. here’s what we’ve got - 

The Winchester’s lost their mom at a young age to some evil thing. Cool, got it.

THEN they have daddy issues with C-minus Single Dad John Winchester. Alright, that seems logical. 

The brothers hunt bad guys looking for the thing that killed their mom. Ok still on board. 

There’s family drama, relatable. 

Dad’s gone missing and we gotta find, ok ok ok. 

Also Sam’s girlfriend dies in a fire, alright, so we’re looking for that thing now too. 

OH! And now Sam has magic powers. 

I mean, it’s a lot, right? We got a lot of layers here. That’s all I’m sayin.

So “Bloody Mary”, right? Big episode, big bad guy, they kinda loophole their way into defeating her but I’m not mad. Big reveal at the end, so kind of an important lore episode. And then...well...then we get the following episodes:

“Skinwalker” - gross-out fx, establishes Dean as a lonely asshole with a lot of APB’s out on him

“The Hook Man” - takes the Urban Legend angle of the show and dials it up to 11

“Bugs” - Does what it says on the tin.

Now to be fair: all three of these episodes have at least ONE shining moment that reveals a little more about the characters we’re working with, and that character development plays out in important ways in the rest of the season/series. But all three of them are arguably---

FILLER EPISODES-ODES-ODES-ODESSssssssss. 

Alright, maybe that’s unkind. Maybe we should call them standalones or self-contained. A Filler is an episode designed to “fill out” your season. It doesn’t necessarily move the overarching story of the season forward, although it may contain some concepts or revelations that are important later. I’d argue that Supernatural has only ever had two kinds of episodes - Series Arc and Filler. Not that that’s a bad thing -  I like a filler episode now and again. Depending on how heavy your season gets (and by all accounts Supernatural gets pretty heavy), they can be a nice breath of fresh air - also known as a Breather Episode. Or they can be just for fun. I’mma reference “Once More with Feeling” again because sure, why not throw in a musical episode in season 6 of a show about vampire slaying, that’s fine. I wanna reference something from Community here too, but honestly anything after season 2 could probably be called filler or self contained, so who even knows. I’ll point at the Voltron episode where they spend a day in the mall to gather some unobtainium for the ship and wacky shenanigans ensue. Point being, they can be times to break the mold and experiment and have fun with what you’re writing. Or they can be ridiculous nonsense. Mileage may vary. 

The crazy thing about these episodes is that they most closely resemble what Kripke intended the show to be in the first place. Kripke wanted a show that revolved around characters investigating American urban legends. What is more quintessentially urban legend than Bloody Mary, the Hook Man and curses from ancient Native American burial grounds? These were stories that I as the viewer was already sort of familiar with because I’d heard of all of them before. What I appreciated, specifically about the Bloody Mary episode, was that they a) acknowledge the fact that these are Urban Legends (capital letters and all) and then b) acknowledge that the legends vary wildly so a part of their job is figuring out what is true and what is rumor. I guess you could also call that a cop out but when I was a kid, I was told that Bloody Mary was the ghost of Queen Mary of England who was sister to Elizabeth I and was also violently anti-protestant. WHERE did I get this story? I have no idea. But I also have no idea where Sam got the “mutilated bride” story from either. 

In an old article I found circa season 2, Kripke actually talks about preferring standalone content to mythology/lore episodes in television. Both as a creator and as a viewer, he wants a show where people can jump in at any time and “join the party” wherever they are. That’s the beauty of procedurals - you don’t need to start from the beginning to enjoy them.

But what really got me personally hooked on the show was the mythology, was the season long arc to find John Winchester and whatever killed their mom. Those mythos episodes were where the meat of the show was for me - it usually involved a lot of feelings and a lot of character development which is still mostly my jam. If I’m obsessively watching a show, it’s because I’m connected to the characters and watching them struggle through the challenges in their path, not because I want to see what monster they kill next. 

And again, I’ll reiterate that each of these episodes contains an important nugget of character. In “Bloody Mary”, easily the least likely to be called Filler, we find out that Sam has weird magic powers that are the real source of his guilt over Jessica’s death. 

In “Skin”, we find out a lot about Dean’s inner landscape from the DopppleDeaner, who reveals that Dean is probably most afraid of people leaving him (be still my 19-year-old heart). 

Wasn’t mad about this bit...

Coulda done without this bit tho...

In “Hookman”...alright, you kinda got me on “Hookman”, but we do get the first appearance of the rocksalt shotgun and Sam talks with a girl about her dad issues which is really Sam talking about his own dad issues in the language of tv shows. Also, he maybe starts to move on from Jessica???? It’s unclear, and also a little weird but I guess he’s only 22 and that’s not that far off from 18/19. 

Really, WB?? Sneaking into sorority houses?

And then in “Bugs”, yes, even in “Bugs”, we get juicy little bit of tension between the brothers as they advise some teen boy about family dynamics. The fight shows a lot about what each character feels about their own experiences growing up the way they did, how they manage the expectations from their own father, and how they believe those family dynamics should exist. I mean I guess you could also argue this is the episode that plants the seed for Wincest, but I don’t really want to go there, let’s not talk about it.

This kid’s like, “This is...not a conversation about me and MY dad, is it?”

So they could be worse. I mean the last two definitely aren’t great, and we’ll see how they measure up to the Monster Truck episode later in the season, but they’re not bad episodes. 

So let’s flash forward to Now again - have we seen the end of Filler Episodes?

As I have mentioned in previous posts and will probably continue mentioning in future posts, the 22 episode season is not the norm anymore. A lot of articles I’ve read point to Breaking Bad as the first American show to really break that mold. Breaking Bad released only 7 episodes in it’s first season in 2007. When you’ve cut your story down that much, there’s no room for filler - you’re basically producing a 7 hour movie. 

Now notice I said American TV show. I’m pretty sure for most of the rest of the world, 22 episodes is way outside the norm, but really I can only speak to UK TV. Seasons in the UK do not last as long as seasons in America. Doctor Who, one of, if not the, longest running show on BBC, aired its first season with 42 episodes, which is mind boggling. But since the series revived in 2005, it hasn’t had more than 13 episodes in a season. Spooks/MI5 never had more than 10 episodes. The IT Crowd only aired 6 episodes per season. Broadchurch had only 8. And because I must complete the Superwholock trifecta, Sherlock seasons were only 3 episodes a piece. These are the shows that spring to mind while I’m writing this, but you get the idea.

So why does American broadcast TV have such long seasons? Well, the answer is: moneymoneymoney.

We live in an age of “prestige” TV. Some throw around “Golden Era”, but there’s been like, a Golden Era of television every 10 years since tv’s became household commodities, so that phrase basically means nothing. TV today is more similar to long-form film making than it was a decade ago. We associate terms like “film” with other terms like “art”, and sometimes we forget that television is, and always was, a business. It’s a business that’s making a lot of money entertaining you for hours on end, but a business nonetheless. I’d argue that it doesn’t mean it’s not art, but I don’t think we can separate the art and entertainment value of tv from its actual monetary value. 

Strategically, the 22-episode season was to get a show to a magical number of total episodes - 100. Once you hit the 100th episode, somewhere around season 5 (thanks math), then you can sell the show in syndicated reruns. This is also referred to as second-run syndication or off-network syndication. When a show is syndicated, that means the production company that produces the show can now sell the right to air episodes to other channels. Think channels like TBS or TNT or even USA Network - they don’t really dabble in producing their own content, they just repackage content from other networks to plug in to empty slots in their programming. And because these channels can air episodes 5 days a week, 365 days a year, that means the production company can actually make more money by selling the show in syndication than when they sold the show to the primary network. The more episodes you have in a season, the faster you get to syndication, and sometimes that means a show that’s on the brink of cancellation due to poor numbers may still get greenlit for another season or two if they’re closer to that magic 100th episode. For a show like Supernatural, that has a very procedural, not-super-heavy-mythos, structure, you can do very well in syndication. Just cuz another network agreed to air your show doesn’t mean they agreed to air it in order, so procedurals work better in syndication than your season-arc shows do. And that’s why we have episodes like Bugs, that have nothing to do with the overarching plot of the season and also phone in some questionable CGI. 

Apparently they DID use real bugs to shoot this scene and everyone got bit to hell but the bugs didn’t show up good and they went with CG anyway?!?

But these days, you don’t have to hit 100 episodes. Sometimes only 80 episodes will do. Sometimes, you run a streaming site and you don’t have to worry about reruns at all because your revenue isn’t generated from air time or even ads, but from subscription prices. Honestly, when you think of it that way, it makes way more sense to greenlight shorter seasons so that you have the budget to buy more and more diverse shows that will appeal to a broader audience of viewers. 

So if Supernatural was produced today, would we get these off-shoot, self-contained episodes that have little to do with the plot of finding Sam and Dean’s dad? It’s hard to say. Knowing what I do about Kripke’s original plans for the show and his thoughts on procedural standalone episodes in general, its possible that he’d still try for a traditional season aired on a traditional TV network. But in that same interview I quoted above, he also mentions that the only way to get into a show with a heavy mythos is to buy the DVDs. We don’t need DVDs anymore - we have Netflix. And Hulu and Prime and any number of other streaming services that pick up any show they can get just to have a larger library of content and attract new viewers. I think a good indicator of what Supernatural would look like if it aired today is Hulu’s Helstrom - a show about two siblings with a childhood marked by strange and terrible happenings, who spend the season trying to defeat an evil demon. This show is a Hulu original that dropped all 10 episodes on October 16, 2020, and damn if that doesn’t sound familiar. I told a friend, “it’s like Supernatural but more emotions.” (Her response was, MORE emotions?!?!?) And before you dive down the rabbit hole, the characters in Helstrom made their debut in a Marvel comic back in the 70’s, so you can just chalk it up to nothing new under the sun. 

Big Mood, guys. Big Mood.

I’ll close this one by reiterating I don’t mind a filler episode. Some fillers can be weird and great and wonderful. I’d say “Tales of Ba Sing Se” (Avatar the Last Air Bender, Season 2)  is a great example - with the possible exception of Appa, the vignettes presented in “Tales” are basically side quests that have nothing to do with the main quest of season 2 and only serve to develop characters. The stories are sweet and touching and also light and fun.

I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying! It’s ok, I’m also crying. 

 And the longer a show runs, the more likely you are to run into these fillers - episodes that take a break from the main action to bring something that’s new and out of the box and possibly/probably writers getting bored with the every-day formula of the show. I think season 1 of Supernatural does a decent job of balancing the two styles of episode so that neither gets boring. In fact, I’m pretty Supernatural was what taught me the difference between the two episode styles in the first place. And the first time around, I was hyped for those season arc episodes, because back in the late 2000’s, I hadn’t seen a lot of TV content like that. Now, 15 years on and mired in a sea of seasons that stick mainly to a season arc story with little to no room for breathing, I think that if all TV became nothing but season arc episodes...well, it’d get pretty boring.