Well.

Oh, my. Does anyone still have yesterday's Sunday Times? Ours only came today, for some reason, and there's me flicking through the Style magazine in bored fashion, when I find the article tagline, "When Frodo Met Sam: A Look At Slash Fiction."

My god. We've gone mainstream, people. I can't seem to link to the article directly, but searching Times Online for "slash" will bring it up. The stand-out line is clearly "...mostly written by bright young heterosexual women."

Well, whoop. Mainsteam. Who'd have thought.

In other news, Nupur and Joshua are here. Keeping them amused is proving difficult. Hannah, I'll ring you tonight.

Buffy - Passion

Passion. Totally, utterly heartbreaking. Maybe it's the gothic tone of the show, but I can't remember being as affected by a single episode of a television show - with the possible and honourable exceptions of Meridian and Goodbye, Farewell, Amen, but they were special, series finale episodes. Passion, a mid-season stand-alone, was sheer, heartbreaking brilliance.

The earlier tricks Angel (Angelus? Is that what he calls himself now?) plays are creepy in a superficial sort of way. The drawings - did anyone know Angel could draw so well? - were good, and I couldn't resist giggling at the sad fate of Willow's fish. And Angel turning up in the library - even that was good but standard fare.

But it's Giles, coming home to the rose, climbing the stairs with the rising operatic crescendo behind him (made more effective, I think, by playing on the turntable as part of the scene rather than being part of the musical score to the episode) in a scene that could be so beautifully romantic and becomes within seconds unutterably dark and horrific as he finds Jenny's body in his bed. And the only part of his reaction we get to see is his smashing the glass. Perfectly painful.

The other thing that was actually painful to watch was Giles and Buffy together after going after Angel. She hits him a lot, which usually makes me giggle, but this was again painful; they attempt in vain to stop each other from falling apart, and there's so much power in a scene that is all of fifteen seconds long.

In a flabbergasted nutshell, this was a gorgeous episode. Once again, I long for DVDs.