sundries

[rm]

In case this isn't clear: You don't fuck with my family. Not my partner. Not my creative collaborators. Not my friends. Not my ex-lovers (because while there are a few who can happily stay way the hell away over there, I don't actually wish bad things upon them). My ability and willingness to make your life unpleasant in completely legal ways is higher than you might suspect. God, I am pissed off at people's shit this week!

With three minutes to spare, I did get those two essays done. Not my best work in the sense of the magic I do with cadence, but clear, entertaining stories with emotional points on topics not previously addressed. I can live with it. I AM A GOD OF ADEQUACY.

Some luxury travel mag came in the mail last night probably because of the cruise we've registered for. It contained: a good feature on NYC with some restaurants I now want to try (yay), a feature on Wales (oh god, I really want to fucking go now, but god help me for wanting to stay in this hip little place with entirely white furniture and awesome textures in fucking Penarth), and a piece on luxury camping which yielded one vacation idea for Patty and I, and one plotbunny.

Gotta get groceries tonight. And do laundry. And deal with the dry cleaning. Food and fabric are both infinite.

Patty sent me pictures of a mass stingray migration yesterday. It's been all over the net, so you've probably seen it, but I fucking love rays, and she remembered that and I was tickled.

Today I am doing work about Tibet.

I am loving the cracktastic AfterElton Torchwood episode summaries.

Interesting movie thing maybe going on for me.

I really thought I was going to be crazy into ST:Reboot fic, as I thought the movie was so sexy and great and loving towards the original and fannish sentiment. However, I find I do not care. I am slightly sad.

Privatization might be next for USPS. It's worked well in other countries, but I'm not sure it would here. In fact, I think it would probably suck. http://naamah-darling.livejournal.com/410499.html

I can deal with people disagreeing about how to achieve universal access to health services, but I can't deal with the people who think that healthcare, the basic medical maintenance of our existence, isn't somehow a basic right. If we say people with more money have more right to health and normal life-expectancy we're getting into some very scary territory. I hate my tax burden, but am glad to pay more, both so my neighbor can get care, and also so that I am not complicit in a serious of illogical and amoral decisions about who is worthy and what has the best ROI. Of course, there are a hundred other things wrong with our healthcare system too, like a focus on non-critical drugs for non-critical ailments that produce lots of side effects and have no efficacy. The whole thing is such a fucking mess and makes me very, very angry.

Being female, I like to say sometimes I was never mine, and this is what I mean: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louise-marie-roth/is-a-woman-in-labor-a-per_b_242307.html More infor here via browneyedgirl65.

When does whatever the big Doctor Who/Torchwood news we're expecting come out of Comic Con? I'm actually sort of tense about it, because there's one thing I'm really hoping it's not, as it will send me off into a deep-end of professional crazy I'm not in the mood for.

I tripped over some stuff yesterday and fucked my knee up but good.

I am having thinky thoughts lately about the current state of the fencing thing (and there's an essay that I have to write relatedly), various BDSM stuff and my crappy disease. All unrelated to each other. Whether I get around to posting any of it is another matter entirely.

I've been eating scads of garlic bread lately. Granted, it's sort of lame celiac garlic bread that involve gluten-free toast topped with vegetable oil butter-like spread, garlic powder, oregano and paprika, but it's still pretty good.

FUCKING SQUIRRELS ripped off more vegetables. FUCKING SQUIRRELS.

Still have a cold, but kinda sorta almost feel human.

I was really hoping my new suit would be here in time for WriterCon, but unless I hear from Seyta today, I'm pretty sure that's not happening.

Looks like the Taco Bell chihuahua died.

Apparently the Save Ianto Jones thing has now made the media. I am charmed by this, even as my feelings are mixed. I'm sorry he had to go, but he was always going to have to go, and I do feel the character, who was so much a kid who thought he was ready to die finding reasons to live (and still not being less about the ready to die thing), got to do everything he needed to, although not everything he wanted to and knew it. And yeah, part of me would love to have him back -- Ianto was the most organically and serendipitiously written character on Torchwood -- everyone admits his arc was never what anyone intended, but I also think his death served the larger narrative about Jack that took place not just in CoE, but across Torchwood thus far and, particularly, what we learn about Jack's future in Doctor Who. Also, writers write what they write for a reason. Sometimes those are reasons of craft; sometimes those are reasons of personal neurotic fixation; usually it's a combination of the two. The idea of anyone petitioning or lobbying to change the stories I need to tell freaks me the fuck out, so the whole petition thing, aside from being, I think, futile, makes me slightly uncomfortable. But I am also so charmed! It makes me feel so good as someone who is crazy about fictions in every possible way to see someone who's real in a different way than you or me so loved. And man, what a fucking kick this crazy ass shit must be for GDL. I'm tickled. I'm also feeling bad for the wave of misery that's going to be showing up tonight with the American broadcast.

Something I've never seen a good writer in Torchwood fandom tackle is Ianto's first time with Jack, if this whole being into men thing is actually news to him (as he claims to his sister, but canon tells us Ianto is a lying liar who lies). I've seen shitty writers do it as a way to address their own experiences of losing their virginity, but seriously? Not relevant and the "sex isn't meaningful unless there's penetration" shit is annoying. I'd like to see a writer do it well, with all that weird, awkward, scary first time stuff, but write it still recognizing that Ianto is a goddamn adult - one who is sexual, determined and compulsive and, my god, has Jack's fucking attention. Someone? ANYONE? If there's an awesome story I've missed somewhere, please let me know.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

I hate the anger, but I think the passion and love about it all is fucking glorious.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

It is, though I wish that some of it didn't leave me feeling like I've been caught in a blast radius.

Which is kind of its own rant, really.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Also, I can't believe I feel the urge to defend myself against charges of "you don't love Ianto enough!" because I liked CoE.

First of all, the conversation is irrational.
Secondly, as a creative, I think it's obnoxious.
Thirdly, to go back to the irrational, people think saying that to me is a good idea? really? have they looked at how I conduct my relationship with fiction? FUCK YOU.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

Plus, I sort of have issues with hostility anyway. It freaks me out on a really basic level and makes me hurt. My impulse is to put myself in the line of fire and engage with it in an empathetic way. Which, while sometimes highly effective, is also really taxing and painful.

It breaks my heart to see people -- especially people I want to like, trust, or respect -- lash out at the creators for doing things I myself might do someday. This whole thing makes me really uneasy as a creative, and I feel betrayed by the people around me because I am not like this. I can't get behind this clusterfuck of vicious counterproductivity because, well, fuck. Makers of the world, is that not self-destructive, much?

I think I'm having a learning experience (not unlike the target-of-wank experience I had a few months ago), but it's not nearly as uplifting as the other one was. Nevermind that my reserves are pretty much spoken for, what with my day-to-day insanity. I'm glad that people were (mostly) respectful of my 'do not bring that shit in here' clause when I committed meta. So help me, I was just about ready to haul in the orbital laser...

If I walk away from this with anything, it will be my post S2 smugness that I can weather a storm in the stories I love without tearing everything down like a goddamn child.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You had more luck than I did with getting people to chill. Because my tonal quality is what it is or because people want my attention in a certain way or because I often just leave people to talk to each other, right when I said, "I need a day off guys" I got everyone doing pretty much exactly the opposite.

There's also the "I can critique this effectively without having seen all of it" thing which is making me nuts. Yes, you can decide whether or not it's for you, and talk about themes and stuff, but no, as someone who does paid criticism, you don't get to say that your criticism is useful IN THE SAME WAY as the criticism of someone who has actually engaged the text. But I'm not having that fight, I'm really not, because the people who want to have that fight are not interested in nuance. (Granted, I am friends with people who have not seen it or all of it and are doing criticism, but they seem to understand the nature of theirs vs. the nature of someone else's and that's fine -- this isn't about you guys!)

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure what to make of the response I got, honestly. It could have been tone, or luck, or that the people on my Lifty f-list are not the people on your f-list, or that the Lifty journal is just so very focused and less personal that maybe people felt less entitled to track their mud on the carpet, so to speak. It could also be a gender thing, which makes me sick to think it, but I wouldn't rule it out.

And yeah, the uninformed critique issue is it's own animal entirely. I think we've all made judgment calls based on hearsay or reviews, but the way non-viewers have sort of sprung in and latched on is kind of shocking. I just want to pull them all aside and say, "Hi. You're not critiquing the programme. You're critiquing messages about the programme. It's like writing your dissertation with nothing but Cliff's Notes. Cut it out."

[madambackslash.livejournal.com]

Also, I can't believe I feel the urge to defend myself against charges of "you don't love Ianto enough!" because I liked CoE.

People are saying that? Seriously??

If anything, knowing that he was a Council estate kid who did it tough growing up _made me love him more_, and explained some thing about him I'd always wondered about.

His death broke my heart, but finding out the truth about his life? How could having that make me love him less?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Seriously. As not composed as I am, you have no idea how much I'm not ranting at people right now, because I'm working hard on not dignifying this shit.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

fucking glorious and utterly fascinating

I'm trying to figure out how to write about it in my book on fandom and serial narrative (which I need to get back to writing).

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have a theory about the Ianto thing in particular. Ellen Kushner posted a quote in her journal the other day that rang very true for me, it said "I am all of my characters, but none of them are me." I suspect it's not that people in fandom identified with Ianto -- that happens with characters all the time. I think, that instead of just the equation of "I'm like him!" people also felt that he was like them, which is a much stranger, rarer feeling, and that's why people are being so... how they are. For me, my access point to the show, and therefor my emotion about it all, is pretty different.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Yes. And it seems to me that different people had different ways in which "he is like me." For some young people who identify as queer, his arc from Lisa to Jack (in relationship terms) seemed to be what they recognized. For others, it was his personality and relationship traits. I remember someone (lioness?) once compared him and Gwen to Austen and Bronte heroines. While for others, I think the identification was more that 20-something, entry-level office job, doing the scutwork, trying to make something of oneself kind of life. So that the identification is more a matter of shared life trajectory than the usual form of identification, which is really imagining oneself into a character's situation more than imagining a character in one's own situation.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Hee! An interesting perspective. He was my fantasy-identification character because he takes picky precision to a level that I would love to achieve, because I have a fetish for service roles (particularly butlers who, for gendered reasons, have more gravitas than secretaries or maids), and because I'm a screaming drag king who wishes I could carry off a three piece suit like that.

If you hadn't said that, I might not have realized exactly how he was pushing my buttons.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Just digressing to say, I may not identify with Ianto, but without that character I never would have learned that I could wear a fucking suit.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

For me, my identification with Ianto was the admin-type job and the reserved personality with a side of snark. No other resemblance. Physically, I'm pretty much a Bridget Spears type, middle-aged and matronly. Sexually, I'm more like Tosh, with really bad luck forming relationships.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the more I think that Ianto is more like my father than me (although God knows in many ways we're as alike as two peas in a pod.) His losing the accent has so much in common with my dad, also brought up on a sink estate, and reinventing himself when he got the chance (mind you, the Scouse accent is so much less mellifluous than the Welsh). The dandy thing, however, is all me ;-)

[madambackslash.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true of me. Without making it all personal and stuff, yes, finding out Ianto was a lot like me... I don't think that's _ever_ happened before.