The awesome Toshiko Sato

[tencrush]

A QUESTION FOR MY TORCHWOOD PALS REGARDING TOSH IN GREEKS BEARING GIFTS

[Poll #1439526]


The reason I ask is because I am reasonably familiar with old skool lesbian pulp fiction novels (umm... here, have a brief introduction), the gist of which is usually something along the lines of an innocent girl being Tempted Into Lesbian Experimentation by an Evil Lesbian, 100+ pages of reasonably tame sex ensue until finally the innocent girl is rescued from the Evils of Sapphic Desire by a Manly Man who Forgives her her Disgusting Aberration and maybe even decides to touch her down there if the thought of it doesn't gross him out him too much. The End. Anyway, that's what Greeks Bearing Gifts was to me, a lesbian pulp novel. And I wonder if one has to be familiar with the genre in order to see it that way, or if it struck more people just generally as kind of a squicky storyline. Feel free to comment and let me know.

Comments

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

Just as a follow up, this is also the episode where Jack tells his Vincent/Vanessa story, which many people have indicated they found squicksome in terms of Jack seeming to have negative feelings about a transexual and he also appears to be equating Vincent's strange behaviour prior to transition with Tosh's.

[tencrush]

You're right, I'd forgotten about that one. That was actually one of the things that made me feel so squicky about the story, this implication of Jack's that Tosh had "turned" somehow.

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

I think the episode looks worse in retrospect. When I first saw it, we were still in the first series which had a marginally lighter tone and we were sort of being sold on the idea of "everybody's bi." That was dramatically pulled back in the 2nd series, and even moreso in the 3rd.

As I'm thinking it through now, given my real aversion to what happens to Tosh in Adam, it's hard to see how Mary is that much different. They're both playing on the same deep-seated needs and in both cases Tosh seems like a rape victim who blames herself. The fact that she doesn't want to let go of the memories in Adam is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing if you take it on a feminist level.

I think it would have done Tosh's character a world of good, if we could have gotten ONE bi-sexual throw-away line in the 2nd series, or if she'd given Martha the eye or something. I still see her as a repressed bisexual, but I wish TPTB hadn't backed away so blatantly from most of the "everybody is bi" theme and let her be not quite so repressed.

[wolfy-writing.livejournal.com]

It definitely looks worse in retrospect. For one thing, at the time I assumed it wasn't going to be basically all Torchwood has to say about women being attracted to other women.

Rusty has issues with how he portrays queer people, including a tendency to not do that well with ones who are not gay men. He's not lesbian-friendly, he's not trans-friendly, and he's only intermittently any good at handling bisexuality.

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

He's also not particularly mother friendly, at least based on the way he writes them for the companions.

The big question with Torchwood is exactly how much imput he had on the episodes he didn't write. Greeks was written by Toby Whithouse, who also wrote School Reunion for Dr. Who. I love that episode (Anthony Head!) but the whole bitch-fight aspect of the Rose/Sarah Jane relationship is less than pleasant to sit through.

[tencrush]

He's not particularly any-woman-older-than-late-twenties friendly full stop. (Except CoE, funnily enough, there all the women were suddenly made of win, every last one of them)

[wolfy-writing.livejournal.com]

There's a subset of Doctor/Rose shippers who keep writing, again and again, the scene where Convenient Magic Of Some Sort ensures that Rose will never grow old (and will either never die, or die exactly when the Doctor does). It fits far too well with the Rustyverse take on women and aging.

[tencrush]

Don't get me started on Donna's feminine wiles, that's the moment I really started taking Rusty's ageism personally.

[tencrush]

like a rape victim who blames herself
Yeah, this, definitely. I always wanted to like Tosh more, because she's geeky and smart and I SHOULD like her more than anyone, really, if you're talking on a who-would-you-identify-with kind of level, but there was always this air of vicimisation and weakness about her that made me really unhappy, and I wish they hadn't taken her character there.