Unfridging
Sep. 21st, 2024 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have for a while been thinking about Pathfinder and how the easyish presence of ressurection can make any imported character's life super complicated.
And I keep starting with Torchwood.
The thing with Torchwood is
the writers looked at the characters and went
"you know what this one needs? more pain!"
So like, some shows, you've got that one fridged woman in the backstory, so one man can have angsty manpain, and only mention her when mentioning she's dead. Right?
But on Torchwood:
Owen Harper! Even if you just take TV canon there's so many fridgings.
Suzie Costello, dead in the first episode, rare case of a woman who dies as the angsty origin story of anither woman (Gwen) but undead!Suzie wasn't just talking about work when she said Gwen replaced her completely. So, goes on the list of Owen's dead. But due to the whole eldritch horror phase of her life, possibly not on the unfridging list, unless we really really want the plot to get messy.
Episode 10 Diane Holmes, might not be dead but is certainly gone, actually pretty easy to bring back since you just have to have her succeed in navigating the rift. ... pretty fun to drop her and her plane into Golarion, just because it wouldn't seem weird to them that she flew, just how.
I always have to look up the name of the lady from Fragments: Katie Russell. Bringing her back would cause the most Story simply because the Owen she knew is someone we barely met. But we don't know her at all. It's sort of weird how they dropped her in the story right at the end but it recontextualises the whole history of Owen being... Owen.
Audio, Big Finish has Iceberg. Amira Hussein, a friend of Owen and Katie. It's a good audio, but for complex spoilery reasons it's an odd angle on her personality. But unfridge her and you get the unpacked one sided Horrible Trauma and also a connection for Katie so Owen isn't the center of the world.
And then from the books, Megan Tegg, an ex girlfriend Owen gets back together with just in time for her to get killed.
Toshiko isn't fridged for Owen, they die the same time, but we're bringing her back in any hypothetical unfridging scenario.
So that's basically an adventuring party and a Big Bad, Owen plus five women he cared about vs one where It's Complicated.
It is also too many dead women to be at all comfortable and we're just getting started.
Oh, also, Lizzie Lewis from that episode with the Ghost Machine. Owen didn't technically meet her but we don't know how well he remembered her. But once you start on the victims of the week list there are... many.
Toshiko is not likely to want to bring Mary-the-alien back, but she is likely to remember there was an original Mary, a woman the alien killed and possessed. Bring her back and there's someone who never met you, but you slept with them, in another life, and it changed her life. Story.
Tommy Brockless might be ressurectable, though talk about a man who might like to get some rest. If he comes back... I was thinking about life on the Worldwound on Golarion, which is swapping one nightmare for another. But wherever he goes if he starts living linear he's brought a unique perspective to it. Big picture of an immortal, small scope of a very mortal somewhat young man. Interesting!
... the wiki mentions Tosh had a brother, but it cites that one audio with the stupid filename name that I don't relisten because they do annoying things with the sound, so I had forgotten that. Still, she would bring him back, if at all possible.
There's someone from the audio Suckers whose death Tosh would feel particularly responsible for.
And the annoying man from The Vigil.
... actually the more I read the wiki the more I'm thinking that's the theme. what doesn't Tosh blame herself for...
I mean as per the Torchwood Archive audios Toshiko figured out how to make herself perfectly luck and then just decided nobody should do that and did retcon about it. Pathfinder has Restoration spells for broadly that problem. So like, how would Tosh feel about that choice, from the other end of having died??
She did the same when put in charge of Torchwood after Jack left: decided to not have the power any more.
Woman needed more confidence.
Yes that leads to an overcorrection story arc.
But eventually Toshiko in charge.
Ianto's list he'd bring back: Lisa, obviously, and therefor Annie. Tanizaki from the same incident. Aaaand basically all of Torchwood One? That is... a lot.
... drop Torchwood One on Golarion and they'd arrogant imperialist colonialism their way into being a catastrophic problem, probably while trying to learn how to manipulate planar rifts to get them back to Earth. Story!
Much less personal story once it goes so plural. What's the minimum size team that could make the maximum mess? And would he actually want to bring back Yvonne? ... she retconned him a lot, he would, and it wouldn't be just his own choices. Story!
The wiki lists one of his prior relationships as Rachel Allan from the Torchwood One audios. It was more of a date, but, Torchwood retconned the *hell* out of her, real death of personality stuff. Bring her back and do Restoration and there might be two incompatible hers. At least one of them hates Torchwood a lot. Story.
The one person he would inarguably resurrect though is his father, and that would be... such the terrible idea. But after hearing Disco... he'd feel he had to.
Evidence is sketchy on his mum being gone but it she were and he got them both back... worlds of yikes really.
It's sad that he couldn't really tell them who he was after Torchwood got hold of him, but they'd have a lot to adjust to all at once.
It seems like fun to have people around who can look at James Bond and see a kid who falls off play equipment, but it's considerable less fun when one of them pushed him.
Angst and woe. And story.
... reading the wiki and remembering that Ianto as a Rogue has a bit of canon support. Apparently his dad taught him to pick locks. He can steal cars handily. And his criminal record says he got done for shoplifting, which I can only imagine as a very younger Ianto.
Hmmm, who else... the audio Serenity had Ianto and Jack undercover as a couple to find aloens, but it turned out everyone in the gate community had been turned into an alien. And then they killed them. Ianto could fairly reasonably feel bad enough about that to import the whole original set of people via ressirrection? Even though they were all like that.
Kind of fun to have a lot of people who remember him and Jack but have totally the wrong ideas about them.
... Jack is the one person you can never bring in to the story via True Resurrection. He never stays dead long enough.
Everyone else gets everyone else back, Ianto is left hoping Jack might cross enough stars to find them one day.
Kind of poetic.
Ianto's issues with dead people (so many) seem eclipsed by his issues with retcon. By this point he's not who he thinks he is. Rather radically.
Which is why I wanted to drop him into the particular adventure path I did, but that's spoilers.
(The wiki summary of Almost Perfect in Ianto's article is flat out wrong but I'm not rereading it today for reference.)
ANYway...
Pathfinder and Torchwood both draw a clear distinction between resurrection and undeath. Owen is very, very, clear on how rubbish undeath is. But Jack doesn't pursue bringing people back any more because, as per his chat with Mr Colchester in the audios, he wouldn't wish the experience of resurrection on people he liked either. So that's some issues. Probably not ones I'd resolve in favor of Jack being right, honestly, I think he's just depressed as hell and conflating things, but that's something to resolve.
The thing is you get people saying that bringing back the dead is sort of cheap and loses all the stakes. But there are so many *different* stories right here in a list of people who they once couldn't save but now get a chance to, only they've moved on different amounts since then and don't quite know each other. I mean Owen has arguably done Some Murder, and even Toshiko doesn't know all of it. Ianto has done... so many things that people he'd bring back wouldn't imagine. So many different stakes in there, that aren't just The End.
Not to mention that Torchwood and Pathfinder have different ideas about The End, and making them fit together does not come up pretty.
So I want to get the characters out of their box and make the story continue.
Obviously the point of stories about grief and loss is you never ever ever again get to do that
but I feel after fifteen years we have that story told.
New ones time.
And I keep starting with Torchwood.
The thing with Torchwood is
the writers looked at the characters and went
"you know what this one needs? more pain!"
So like, some shows, you've got that one fridged woman in the backstory, so one man can have angsty manpain, and only mention her when mentioning she's dead. Right?
But on Torchwood:
Owen Harper! Even if you just take TV canon there's so many fridgings.
Suzie Costello, dead in the first episode, rare case of a woman who dies as the angsty origin story of anither woman (Gwen) but undead!Suzie wasn't just talking about work when she said Gwen replaced her completely. So, goes on the list of Owen's dead. But due to the whole eldritch horror phase of her life, possibly not on the unfridging list, unless we really really want the plot to get messy.
Episode 10 Diane Holmes, might not be dead but is certainly gone, actually pretty easy to bring back since you just have to have her succeed in navigating the rift. ... pretty fun to drop her and her plane into Golarion, just because it wouldn't seem weird to them that she flew, just how.
I always have to look up the name of the lady from Fragments: Katie Russell. Bringing her back would cause the most Story simply because the Owen she knew is someone we barely met. But we don't know her at all. It's sort of weird how they dropped her in the story right at the end but it recontextualises the whole history of Owen being... Owen.
Audio, Big Finish has Iceberg. Amira Hussein, a friend of Owen and Katie. It's a good audio, but for complex spoilery reasons it's an odd angle on her personality. But unfridge her and you get the unpacked one sided Horrible Trauma and also a connection for Katie so Owen isn't the center of the world.
And then from the books, Megan Tegg, an ex girlfriend Owen gets back together with just in time for her to get killed.
Toshiko isn't fridged for Owen, they die the same time, but we're bringing her back in any hypothetical unfridging scenario.
So that's basically an adventuring party and a Big Bad, Owen plus five women he cared about vs one where It's Complicated.
It is also too many dead women to be at all comfortable and we're just getting started.
Oh, also, Lizzie Lewis from that episode with the Ghost Machine. Owen didn't technically meet her but we don't know how well he remembered her. But once you start on the victims of the week list there are... many.
Toshiko is not likely to want to bring Mary-the-alien back, but she is likely to remember there was an original Mary, a woman the alien killed and possessed. Bring her back and there's someone who never met you, but you slept with them, in another life, and it changed her life. Story.
Tommy Brockless might be ressurectable, though talk about a man who might like to get some rest. If he comes back... I was thinking about life on the Worldwound on Golarion, which is swapping one nightmare for another. But wherever he goes if he starts living linear he's brought a unique perspective to it. Big picture of an immortal, small scope of a very mortal somewhat young man. Interesting!
... the wiki mentions Tosh had a brother, but it cites that one audio with the stupid filename name that I don't relisten because they do annoying things with the sound, so I had forgotten that. Still, she would bring him back, if at all possible.
There's someone from the audio Suckers whose death Tosh would feel particularly responsible for.
And the annoying man from The Vigil.
... actually the more I read the wiki the more I'm thinking that's the theme. what doesn't Tosh blame herself for...
I mean as per the Torchwood Archive audios Toshiko figured out how to make herself perfectly luck and then just decided nobody should do that and did retcon about it. Pathfinder has Restoration spells for broadly that problem. So like, how would Tosh feel about that choice, from the other end of having died??
She did the same when put in charge of Torchwood after Jack left: decided to not have the power any more.
Woman needed more confidence.
Yes that leads to an overcorrection story arc.
But eventually Toshiko in charge.
Ianto's list he'd bring back: Lisa, obviously, and therefor Annie. Tanizaki from the same incident. Aaaand basically all of Torchwood One? That is... a lot.
... drop Torchwood One on Golarion and they'd arrogant imperialist colonialism their way into being a catastrophic problem, probably while trying to learn how to manipulate planar rifts to get them back to Earth. Story!
Much less personal story once it goes so plural. What's the minimum size team that could make the maximum mess? And would he actually want to bring back Yvonne? ... she retconned him a lot, he would, and it wouldn't be just his own choices. Story!
The wiki lists one of his prior relationships as Rachel Allan from the Torchwood One audios. It was more of a date, but, Torchwood retconned the *hell* out of her, real death of personality stuff. Bring her back and do Restoration and there might be two incompatible hers. At least one of them hates Torchwood a lot. Story.
The one person he would inarguably resurrect though is his father, and that would be... such the terrible idea. But after hearing Disco... he'd feel he had to.
Evidence is sketchy on his mum being gone but it she were and he got them both back... worlds of yikes really.
It's sad that he couldn't really tell them who he was after Torchwood got hold of him, but they'd have a lot to adjust to all at once.
It seems like fun to have people around who can look at James Bond and see a kid who falls off play equipment, but it's considerable less fun when one of them pushed him.
Angst and woe. And story.
... reading the wiki and remembering that Ianto as a Rogue has a bit of canon support. Apparently his dad taught him to pick locks. He can steal cars handily. And his criminal record says he got done for shoplifting, which I can only imagine as a very younger Ianto.
Hmmm, who else... the audio Serenity had Ianto and Jack undercover as a couple to find aloens, but it turned out everyone in the gate community had been turned into an alien. And then they killed them. Ianto could fairly reasonably feel bad enough about that to import the whole original set of people via ressirrection? Even though they were all like that.
Kind of fun to have a lot of people who remember him and Jack but have totally the wrong ideas about them.
... Jack is the one person you can never bring in to the story via True Resurrection. He never stays dead long enough.
Everyone else gets everyone else back, Ianto is left hoping Jack might cross enough stars to find them one day.
Kind of poetic.
Ianto's issues with dead people (so many) seem eclipsed by his issues with retcon. By this point he's not who he thinks he is. Rather radically.
Which is why I wanted to drop him into the particular adventure path I did, but that's spoilers.
(The wiki summary of Almost Perfect in Ianto's article is flat out wrong but I'm not rereading it today for reference.)
ANYway...
Pathfinder and Torchwood both draw a clear distinction between resurrection and undeath. Owen is very, very, clear on how rubbish undeath is. But Jack doesn't pursue bringing people back any more because, as per his chat with Mr Colchester in the audios, he wouldn't wish the experience of resurrection on people he liked either. So that's some issues. Probably not ones I'd resolve in favor of Jack being right, honestly, I think he's just depressed as hell and conflating things, but that's something to resolve.
The thing is you get people saying that bringing back the dead is sort of cheap and loses all the stakes. But there are so many *different* stories right here in a list of people who they once couldn't save but now get a chance to, only they've moved on different amounts since then and don't quite know each other. I mean Owen has arguably done Some Murder, and even Toshiko doesn't know all of it. Ianto has done... so many things that people he'd bring back wouldn't imagine. So many different stakes in there, that aren't just The End.
Not to mention that Torchwood and Pathfinder have different ideas about The End, and making them fit together does not come up pretty.
So I want to get the characters out of their box and make the story continue.
Obviously the point of stories about grief and loss is you never ever ever again get to do that
but I feel after fifteen years we have that story told.
New ones time.