sundries

[rm]

What healthcare reform does, or rather doesn't, mean for LGBTQ Americans.

UK B&B turns away gay couple. I LOVE staying in B&B's and have recently introduced Patty to the joys of it. But I worry about this EVERY TIME.

British kids think hacking is wrong. 25% of them have tried it anyway. I blame Spooks.

Last night we went to a restaurant we always go to, where I ordered what I always ordered, but alas, somehow the place decided that a satueed chicken breast should be dipped in flour first. I thought I was being paranoid, so ate half my meal, then realized I was having stabbing pains and am now dealing with gluten poisoning. Honestly, I got off easy as I did everything I could once I realized, but I still feel awful.

On an average day last week, I paged Patty three times. Obama paged her 6 - 10. I'm this close to writing an essay about how Obama thinks they are going to the movies together on Friday night or something.

White Collar fen: the difference between plane and plain. Learn it. Love it.

I was having an excellent conversation with neifile7 the other day somewhere where you can't see it, and we were talking about the thing where Torchwood fandom is all over White Collar and what that's about.

White Collar seems to be hitting something in people other than "pretty suits" and "lying liar who lies" and I suspect it's because we see Neal getting that hand-at-the-back mentoring from Peter that I think a decent number of the folks who identified with Ianto really wanted to see Ianto get from Jack (and we don't see it overtly, like we do in White Collar, we had to assume it, and for me, in that regard Ianto had very much arrived in terms of competence by the time of CoE, so I think maybe people didn't just lose the character, they lost the dynamic they both wanted and needed him for, hence the rage in some cases). So I think it's meeting that need for a benevolent but harsh taskmaster thing as gen or as kinky as the viewers want.

Peter makes Neal a finer thing. People _wanted_ Jack to make Ianto a finer thing, but whether he did (whether he tried, whether that was the dynamic there) is far more arguable.

That's what I'm seeing anyway, as someone who wasted a lot of their 20s wanting someone to make me a finer thing and then decided no one else was really worthy or capable of the job (I am not saying this desire is jejune, btw, I am saying this desire led me to be an idiot and didn't work for me; your storybook may vary).

And I didn't watch Torchwood through that lens (I saw Ianto as someone Jack (and others in the past) forced to learn to do such stuff for himself, fast, and I appreciated the relationship for that reason. I also didn't identify with Ianto, which is separate but tangental). Watching White Collar, however, gives me a nostalgia for the desires of my 20s. I recognize, very keenly the texture of the day-dreams it evokes for me.

Every time I try to plan a shooting excursion, EVERY TIME, there's some social conflict that makes it really, really impossible. *Cranky*

I'm feeling better and better (and more excited about) the new Doctor Who series and Eleven. I worried it was going to be somehow short on the epicness and the darkness (because I feel like a lot of people are happy to say goodbye to Ten because of said epicness and darkness). But I've been watching the new trailers and it makes me tear up in that way that the Whoniverse does and I think it's going to be AWESOME. Besides, the Moff totally brings the 51st-century, so even we don't get more Jack, we get Jack context. Also: I WILL BE IN THE UK WHEN THE NEW SERIES PREMIERES.

Comments

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

I know I've said this before, by my theory is that Neal is a lot more like Jack than he is like Ianto, so it makes sense to me that you don't identify with Neal.

While I do agree with rm that for many TW people (and definitely for me), we see Neal getting something from Peter that many of us wanted to see Ianto get from Jack, when you look at the characters themselves, I think Neal's situation is much more like Jack's when he found himself on the TARDIS in DW S1 than like Ianto's in TW. And of course there are the other obvious similarities in their characters; suave con-men, etc.