sundries

[rm]

As was her plan, Fayah Azadi was martyred.

***

I had sort of made a decision on the dresses, and then this got thrown into the mix thanks to lolliejean.

PugCake! via tsarina

On the ongoing laptop subject... basic video editing -- can I do it on a white MacBook without beating my head into a wall? Or will I need go up the food chain. We're not talking about huge files here, just a few basic cuts in segments that are 15 minutes or less. (Hi, I've never done video editing and have no idea what I'm talking about).

So, on the subject of video editing: I've decided to start doing little video reports from my life on the SF/F D-list (I need a better name). What particular chaos at Dragon*Con would you guys like to see through the tiny fish, big pond, omg-I-was-sitting-in-the-bar-and-you'll-never-guess-what-just-happened lens?

Oh man, something just got added to my Dragon*Con schedule for Monday.

Speaking of fish, DID YOU SEE THE FISH?

If you have a paid LJ account, you can extend that with three days of free paid time to make up for recent outages. But you have to go here.

ktempest posts about dealing with the trolls that are an inevitable side effect of trying to discuss racism, homophobia and privilege on the Internet.

On the subject of DoMA Obama's jsutice department changes its tune.

Justine Larbalestier's Liar now has a cover that doesn't lie about the book's contents.

The truth about healthcare in the U.S.

They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.

A response to women being told to be afraid and curtail their perfectly ordinary actions accordingly.

DWNY with Gary Russsel tomorrow!

There's this thing going around from After Elton about Ianto's death and CoE and how said death was meaningless. I know it speaks for a lot of you, and I just want to make it clear that my disagreement with the piece is in no way about saying "you are wrong!" or negating your emotions, because lord knows, I am still fucked up about this shit. But sometimes, death is meaningless. It's stupid and careless and just dumb. But it doesn't negate everything that leads up to that death, it doesn't negate the life or the sentiments or actions that led up to the death -- regardless of whether they were meaningful or not.

Are deaths from cancer meaningful? What about folks who get hit by cars? Aneurysms? Hell, are all military deaths even meaningful? Especially when it's another malfunctioning fucking helicopter (do you know how many service men and women we've lost to those?)

Now I realize, we want fictional deaths to be meaningful. They must, of course, serve the narrative, and if we've ever taken a writing class we learn "something has to happen and something has to change." But real life isn't like that. Sometimes shit doesn't happen. Sometimes shit doesn't change. And, sometimes, a death doesn't mean anything. But the life did.

Look, I get, I really, really get, that for a lot of people Ianto's death is very much what Snape's "snake bubble to the head" anti-climax of a death was for me. And I am so entirely with you on the weird emotional thing we're all still doing with it.

But my mallet of perspective is all the people losing people all around me. And that mallet of perspective isn't the moment of loss, but the process of it. I realize lots of you guys have that mallet of perspective too -- and for you fiction matters because it's a solace, because stories should tell us that life is better than that and that there are reasons for terrible things and that they are beautiful, and give us something to believe in, in our heads when it's hard to have anything in our actual lives to be solaced by. I get that too.

But for whatever reason, I'm not like that. Fiction isn't my escape; it's my preparation.

So maybe the death was meaningless (which I don't agree with in endless rambly meta I typed weeks ago, but maybe I'm totally wrong! maybe it doesn't matter -- it's just TV and there's no such thing as the truth anyway and this is all just opinions besides). But to me, it doesn't matter. Because the life wasn't meaningless, fictional though it may have been. It sure wasn't meaningless to the other characters. And it wasn't meaningless to us, out here, looking at that screen.

It is so primal and strange, this demand for control in the face of the void, this wanting of a good death for people. I thought it was a good death, even if it wasn't a needful one (i.e., the plan sucked, but I think there was a reason for that). Others don't. But it was a good life, and in the end, shouldn't that count more?

Comments

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

You know, fiction is discussion for me. It might be prep, though Jesus, I don't feel like I need any more of that. What I liked about Ianto's death, once I did my sackcloth and ashes bit (mostly because I would have liked another season. I just wanted more Ianto in canon, period), and also what I adored about Snape's death, too was that it was apropos. It fit. It was meaningless because that is real, in those particular cases. Snape lived in the back of the room, ignored, disregarded, hiding, being hidden, and if Harry hasn't witnessed his death through chance, his body might have laid there for days, months even. That works more me.

Ianto? Yeah, it was a little impractical (like a few niggling plot holes that I would have liked to have seen cleared), but he died in almost a foolhardy manner, in a moment of bravado in which he trusted Jack, as he always did, a moment for which Jack wasn't remotely prepared. But it's Torchwood, which is pretty damn close to the front lines in concept, and I often think of how many soldiers die in the first few minutes of battle. The first few seconds, even. The average life span if a WW1 machine gunner, once he hit the trigger, was approx 30 seconds, IIRC.

Anyway, I like that it happened at an "aw shit" moment in some ways, because Jesus, those are the ones that hurt the most, and they mean the most because they DON'T mean anything. Gah. I dunno how I can say that more clearly.

Also? I am content to be overruled.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Just word. To all of this.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Oh! I made sense! Usually I let fic do the talking for me. But I'm trying something new.