rm | sundries

Last night I finished Sarah Pinborough's Torchwood novel Into the Silence which is very much an animal apart from the other others. It has its problems, but it feels like she tried to write a real book, and, more than any of the other TW novels thus far, looked at the things fan-writers tend to look at, without committing fanservice.

For one thing, we get a lot of time in Jack's head about his immortality and how this affects his ability to relate to other people. It seems like a great set-up for CoE in the sense that I don't feel like Jack has made a choice yet about how to emotionally engage Ianto, but he can tell he has to and that it's going to cost him either way (there's also a bit of thought about whether Gwen or Ianto will leave Torchwood by death or retcon, which felt deeply ominous to me as regards CoE). He's dwelling on Owen and Tosh; he feels isolated; he has to make hard choices. As much as the central plot of this one seems to revolve around Ianto and the singing thing, Pinborough's access point to the TW universe is clearly Jack and Jack's emotions. We haven't seen that before, and since that's my access point to TW also, it was a great read for me. Her Gwen is solid and interesting, and it's worth noting that we almost never see Ianto's emotions from Ianto's perspective, except when he's cranky -- instead we see Gwen and Jack assuming what he's thinking. It's interesting, and I don't know if it was a conscious decision on the author's part, but it's worth nothing.

She's also fantastic with the OCs. I loved Cutler and her details were, in general, sharp and interesting, although this is also where the book potentially runs into trouble for some readers. There's a significant subplot involving a severely autistic boy. The plot is within the realm of reason, but in an extremely outlying way that could imply a lack of understanding of autism, and it's probably going to piss some readers off. I was willing to run with it and, when that part of the plot gets resolved, accept it, because this is a book all about murky shitty choices and it's clearly taking its cues both from Meat and Small Worlds. But if you're not comfortable with shitty and grey choices not being explicitly spelled out as such or having bad consequences, this book may make you angry, but I think it walks the line in true Torchwood style.

For Jack and Ianto fans, their relationship feels like solid, if unlabeled, background noise, and it's satisfying. Pinborough gets away with (or was willing to provide) more risque innuendo than I've seen in the novels so far, even as it's much less an upfront thing than, say, Almost Perfect. There are times you want to shake both Jack and Ianto, but not in a stupid French farce sort of way -- they're both just odd ducks, and I think there's some good fanfiction fodder in trying to figure out why on earth they conduct themselves towards each other quite the way they do.

Hopefully we'll have more from Pinborough in this franchise. She's bringing something to the table no one else has yet -- in the books or on screen (with the possible exception of Out of Time) -- and I think her work has the potential to satisfy readers who look at some of the more emotionally thoughtful and well-plotted fanwork in this franchise and say "why couldn't the show do this?"

Last night our house had an Epic Waterbug Incident and now we don't know where it is. I am now living in denial.

You cannot make an inhumane and discriminatory policy that compromises our national security by forcing soldiers with valuable skills out of the service more humane with this shitty logic: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/01/gates.gays/index.html Grrrrrr.

Today's TW radio play. No useful commentary, just Communication, Accommodation, Transportation and Hair! Also, seriously... the motorbike? Hahahaahahahah. Also, wow, Jack is a dick in this. Overall? No discernible point, but nice re-intro to the characters, solid story, etc.. Also a CoE concern: The radio plays are supposed to be canon and backstory for S3 -- lots of retcon; I've got a bad feeling about this re: Ianto. I'm trying to be chill, I am, but I find myself walking home on these late summer nights and feeling the doom.

Should also post reviews of TW audio-only books soon too. Not today. Working working!

Today I dropped off two shirts at the cleaners -- the dark blue-grey and the light blue. And I picked up a bunch of shirts -- the white, the light blue pinstripe, the dark blue pinstripe, the multiple shades of blue pinstripe, and the light blue-grey. All of which means -- I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE MY NAVY BLUE SHIRT IS. This is really bugging me. But since it's laundry night, hopefully it got sorted into wash instead of drycleaning and that will resolve that.

Writers behaving badly. This is one of like three incidents of same I've heard about this week. AND IT'S ONLY WEDNESDAY. People! I've a short temper and no doubt delusions about my talent and importance, but I know better, why don't these people?

Unhappy about all the "acetimophen is dangerous and we're reducing the amount of it/eliminating it from some meds" thing. Acetimophen is pretty much the only painkiller I can take -- ibuprofen doesn't work on me, aspirin bothers my stomach (even coated), naproxen doesn't touch it for me either. Most prescription stuff gives me terrible side effects. I don't take painkillers often, but when I need them, I need them, and the idea of not being easily able to get my Tylenol is NOT OKAY.

This is one giant clusterfuck of a story: http://gothamist.com/2009/06/30/woman_says_misogynistic_cop_arreste.php

Meanwhile,

laurashapiro alerts us to a documentary on gender identity issues, homosexuality and Iran on HBO. Review (a must read) here: http://www.doublex.com/section/arts/get-sex-change-iran

Via several on my friends list: There's a new multi-fandom awards thing for LJ vidders, but it's not accepting any GBLTQ content -- even when that content is canonical to the shows the vids are from. So yeah, not just against slash in non-canon pairings, just plain ol' homophobic. Also, seriously disrespectful, not just to queer people and fandom, but also to creatives of all stripes -- apparently some of our stories don't really exist! Linky details from

xtricks here: http://xtricks.livejournal.com/96484.html