Zurich, Tuesday evening

[rm]

I got a bit lost coming back to the hotel from the office tonight, but might sense of direction was good enough that I solved it on my own. The streets here are a bit like the West Village in NYC -- you think you're walking one way, and you're not. You can navigate by the church steeples (the way we used to with the WTC) if you can tell them apart. I just followed the various trolly lines.

Tonight's supermarket adventure involves getting little sacks of marzipan fruit super cheap, and trying to figure out my size and color in pantyhose here. I really should wear dresses for the conference days, even as I feel less dressed up in them and the whole thing is conflict-y in my head. So now I'm running a bath so I can shave my legs.

The hotel we're in is weird -- business, students with a bit of a budget, folks just checking in for the night for various more obvious than they think reasons (hello gay guy in elevator with toy bag!).

I'm still all about Waters of Mars, and it led to a wide-ranging "is anyone watching the show I think I'm watching" email exchange earlier today, that basically boiled down to: Sometimes death is an act of hope. That's right, I like the Whoniverse for all the shit people find bleak, not because I like bleak stuff, but because I just don't find it bleak. Or something. It makes me feel a bit as if I'm on another planet sometimes (although that could just be Zurich). So, I'm like this close to putting it on a t-shirt to wear at Gally should I ever not be cosplaying. Because seriously? Adelaide Brooke? Ianto Jones? Harriet Jones? Beth? All acts of hope, regardless of lack of planning, individual tragedy, or writerly issues. But then, I'm really interested in the whole life/death/memory/heroism equation that the Whoniverse has going on because of Jack's not dying problem and the Doctor's regeneration thing.

Okay. Bath. Work. Writing. Sleep.

Comments

[phaetonschariot.livejournal.com]

Harriet Jones' death was super awesome.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

I loved Waters of Mars too, and I agree with you that in the Whoniverse, yes, death is often an act of hope (this is also something that plays out in The Sarah Jane Adventures) -- but I just don't see that in Ianto's death at all. With Ianto's death, I think that RTD was quite explicitly trying to emphasise hopelessness -- the only "purpose" of his death was to break Jack, to destroy his hope.

It's hard for me to seperate my critical brain from my personal attachment to the character, but I do think that that's one reason that Ianto's death had a feeling of wrongness about it that wasn't present when Tosh and Owen, and Adelaide and Harriet Jones died.

[tree00faery.livejournal.com]

This.

As the other party...

[kalichan.livejournal.com]

...in the "Sometimes death is an act of hope" conversation, and also, as someone whose problems with Torchwood s3 seem to be different than other people's, I think that viewing Ianto's death as only there to break Jack... minimizes his choices. Writerly quibbles aside, he decided to be there. It was an act of hope for him, the same act of hope that anyone giving their life for the greater good makes: that you did something, that your choices make a difference, that the world goes on even when you're not in it, that it doesn't all end with you.

Re: As the other party...

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Certainly I think that Ianto was there because he had hope -- or rather, because Jack was his symbol of hope, and he trusted Jack implicitly, in spite of having many reasons not to do so -- but it feels to me like it was about punishing Ianto for having that hope and that trust. And his death is the death of that hope.

[argentla.livejournal.com]

I'm not super-familiar with the Dr. Who mythology, but does this mean that the Doctor and Jack and other immortals (effective or otherwise) are to some extent less capable of heroism? That wouldn't be out of keeping with my admittedly limited reading of the universe.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

Maybe. Maybe that's what makes them tragic, and in striving despite the tragedy they become heroic again.

[crewgrrl.livejournal.com]

I did enjoy it, except I have felt this odd sense of RTD burning his toys so that no one else can play with them. Jack is broken, The Doctor is broken, and I can only hope that Steven Moffat can put this 'verse back together in the way that it deserves.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I miss my city!

The trams are actually pretty easy to negotiate especially in Zone 10 and especially if you can navigate the NY subways. And the arrival times on the schedule tend to be accurate.

Do make sure to get to the Christmas Market in Hauptbahnhof!

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

This is interesting, because there have been moments when I felt like Who was "pro-life" to a fault. I mean, living is all well and good and most any mentally healthy person would choose it over dying, but sometimes death is not the worst thing and sometimes it is, as you say, an act of hope. I never thought the Doctor understood that, that regeneration had given him a skewed perspective (which is actually the title of a fic I wrote about more or less this very thing) on the subject, but the conversation he has with Adelaide, where she asks what happens on the station and he says, "Something wonderful," made me think, briefly, that he did.

But in the end, all the Doctor really wants is a day when everyone, or at least someone, lives. One way of looking at the end of WoM is that he decides that he is willing to pay any price to get that. Because whatever he told Adelaide on the space station, the Doctor cannot understand death as an act of hope. The show does, I think; you named Adelaide, Ianto, and Harriet, but I would add the Time Lords themselves. Part of the reason I found that moment when he declares himself the Time Lord victorious so disturbing is that he is in effect dancing on the graves of people he has heretofore been mourning. He demeans their sacrifice.

So, yes, I think the show does demonstrate that sometimes death is an act of hope, even as its main characters fail to understand that very message. But maybe by the time Ten is done, he will.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Because seriously? Adelaide Brooke? Ianto Jones? Harriet Jones? Beth? All acts of hope, regardless of lack of planning, individual tragedy, or writerly issues.

What? I... what?

I can see using your last seconds to delay someone, like Harriet Jones did. Or committing suicide while you're still you, like Beth. I could see how these things could be considered an "act of hope" as they were hoping to accomplish an objective by dying. I would probably describe them as a different emotion than hope. Courage, maybe, or desperation.

There was nothing hopeful about Ianto's death. He died pointlessly, and meta-textually, he died for a completely hack reason. I haven't seen Waters of Mars so I can't comment more specifically on Adelaide's death, but from the reviews I've read I can't imagine that hope had anything to do with it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying it was necessarily well-executed form a production standpoint nor can I say it was any sort of good plan from the perspective of Team Torchwood, but I do feel Ianto's agency as a character is generally ignored in discussion of this.

He knew what he was getting into and he wanted to be there. He made a choice to fight, even if that choice was more futile than he could have imagined (although, also arguably not -- where is where the writing does get called into question, because it's highly debatable how clear the show was able to make it that Jack's actions in Day 5 (a subject for many other debates as well) were only possible because of Ianto's death, which is what RTD has argued).

In my perception of Ianto's sense of self-narrative, he damn well knew he might probably die (that phone call to his sister!) and thought that death would be in service to a good beyond himself. So much of Torchwood's narrative is about people who view themselves already dead and about selfishness -- it comes up with Jack over and over, it comes up with Suzy and Owen and Tosh, it comes up with Ianto living on borrowed time post-Canary Wharf and post-Lisa (the only person on the show it doesn't come up with is Gwen, which emphasizes her place in Jack's self-narrative and may explain some of the fandom Gwen-hate beyond writing issues and misogyny).

I thought Ianto's choices were very in keeping with the themes of the show and the character's complete blind spot when it comes to self-preservation in the face of his relationships. We, from the outside, might not have cause or be okay with or satisfied in his death, and let me tell you, I wasn't happy about it (I am still sad, in ways I don't talk about, because it means I get to keep having this discussion) but I really, really thought he got a good death, one the character himself would have been proud of.

For me as an audience member after coming through the Harry Potter fandom in which a character I adored got what I felt was a naratively and emotionally pointless death that just would have irritated him (Snape), the nature of Ianto's death was something I was quite grateful for.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I don't really consider Ianto's agency in this, as I don't think Ianto had any agency in his death. Yes, Ianto chose to go into the room, he chose to shoot at the tank. I don't think he chose to breath in tainted air.

A similar situation would be a solider going off to war, and then being electrocuted in the shower by shoddy wiring.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

That's right, I like the Whoniverse for all the shit people find bleak, not because I like bleak stuff, but because I just don't find it bleak. Or something.

I've been vaguely thinking along the lines that it might be because especially with DW RTD has the tendency to go for these big tragic themes in a way that sometimes feels almost old-fashioned to me, because it's so completely unselfconsciously emotional. And at least in the realm of fiction tragic doesn't necessarily equal bleak in my head, if that makes any sense at all. Maybe I should blame all the Greek and German mythology I grew up with? My brain chemistry? Meaninglessness, cynicism, the absence of emotions... that is bleak for me, anything beyond that, if there's death, but also love, grief, purpose, defiance, hope... isn't.

[rm.livejournal.com]

OMG, I'm on a shitty Internet connection on a weird business trip right now but I read this and just went "DO I LIKE BAZ LUHRMANN AND THE WHONIVERSE FOR THE SAME REASONS?" -- a thought whihc raises all sorts of scary -- and musical -- questions.

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

Taoism and the Tenth Doctor. garpu found this link, and damn, is it a good read:

http://www.geekachicas.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=taoism-and-the-tenth-doctor.html&Itemid=55

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Just caught up to this. That's a fantastic essay.

[raaven.livejournal.com]

Sometimes death is an act of hope.

I hadn't thought of this in quite this way before, but I think it's spot-on. I think that it also throws into sharp relief the hopelessness of our characters who *can't* die.

Huh.