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]

On an individual level, I don't think you need feel bad at all if you prefer the way this other thing is framed, and find it more emotionally satisfying, but if you're going to make comparisions, I'd be wary of implying that it's necessarily about what's a better or more valid queer narrative rather than just one that works better for you, for what you need.

I guess I just have concerns on a more political/societal level, where intention certainly doesn't count for much, that my personal reactions reinforce some pretty damaging heterocentric/heterosexist paradigms, much as I don't want them to.

Canon queer couples aren't under any obligation to be friendly to slashers, nor is their story required to be a love story.

The reason I made that comparison was simply because it's a particular sort of tension that I see arising out of people (including myself) using a canonically-straight slash couple (or triad) as a sort of emotional substitute for a queer canon couple; I was thinking in terms fairly specific to Torchwood and White Collar, and the fannish ways in which people are engaging with both of them in tandem.

I certainly don't think that canon queer couples are under and obligation to be slash friendly or to be a love story, and I apologise for implying that. With the love story thing, I think that simply comes out of the way that CoE was constantly promoted to fans as a J/I love story -- and although I know that some people such as yourself did see it that way, there are also an awful lot of people who very much did not -- and I don't think the latter reaction came solely from people who were simply after canon slash.

From my perspective, regardless of whether the writers intended J/I to be a love story or to be a un-love story, they fucked it up either way. The interactions between Jack and Ianto weren't extensive or nuanced enough to actually explore their relationship as either a love story or a non-love story; the J/I interactions in CoE, to me, felt like they were written as an afterthought.

But when I see people such as yourself and rm and cruentum who obviously didn't feel that way, I have to wonder if I perceive CoE like that because I'm approaching it from some sort of heteronormative paradigm that I'm not usually aware of, especially when I find myself watching a show about canonically straight characters, purposefully seeking out TW parallels, and concluding that the show with the straight characters does it better. I mean, I'd like to just say "oh, that's just my personal reaction", but my personal reactions are informed by the heteronormative culture I've grown up in.

(ETA: I also want to make it clear here that I'm not trying to make broad statements about everyone who reacts to TW or White Collar in a particular way -- I mean, obviously there are a lot of queer viewers who were unsatisfied with J/I in CoE and who love the character interactions in White Collar, and two people can share very similar reactions for very different reasons. I'm just saying that for me, these are the issues that are in play when I think about my responses to the two shows -- and I should make it clear that while I am obviously struggling with this, I'm not talking about it because I expect anyone to step in and give me the all the answers. It's right that this sort of thing should be difficult, and there may well be no One True Answer anyway.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

One of the very, very cranky things I've wound up saying a lot in all of this is "no one queer person can speak for all queer people."

And neither can three queer people. Or twenty. Because, among other things, the three of us you cite, I'm not even sure how all of us I identify (since, I think it's fair to say there's been shifting for all of us since we've become acquainted). What I do know, is that the three of us all more or less liked/were okay with CoE, although, I think for pretty different reasons. I mean, I'd be surprised if cruentum and I agreed on narratives in general more than 50% of the time, if that.

While queer is my over-arching adjective for myself, because it affects how I am perceived and my legal rights every moment of every day much more than any other status about me, my perception of stories also comes from my family, my class, my nationality, my professions, my friends, my history, etc. And so does everyone else's. If queer isn't the only true adjective about me when looking at a story, I'm not sure why you're concerned that not-queer is the only true one about you.

I realize you haven't known me long enough to know this, but in my 20s I spent 7 years with a man who only admitted we were dating after we broke up. And we did love each other. That, in even so extremely abbreviated a narrative, might shed a pretty good light on why J/I sure look like a love story to me (I've had that stupid couple conversation, more than once). And the experience that gives me that lens has remarkably little to do with my queerness.

Which means your presumable lack of similar experience and different perspective also has very little to do with your non-queerness. It's just a thing.

But, in light of this above, this certainly clarifies for me why I get so testy when people say "love looks like x,y,z" when talking about CoE. Other people defining what love is for me is both a personal hot-button (and therefore my own problem to deal with) and a subject on which I'm at times playing from a different set of data, both in my present and my past.

(All of which is a way of saying, "dunno if that helped your processing,but that sure as shit clarified something for me internally, which I hope I've now actually been able to articulate to others in a way that is at least marginally relevant to the conversation").

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

One of the very, very cranky things I've wound up saying a lot in all of this is "no one queer person can speak for all queer people."

Ack, I am really really sorry for implying that. :(

I think it's more a matter of when three people I admire and respect all see things in one way (even if you all see it in that way for very different reasons), it makes me doubt myself. And it especially makes me doubt myself when I find myself seeking "refuge" in heteronormative places.

And also, a big part of why I doubt myself here is because I do know that love looks different for different people, and one of the things I liked about J/I in S2 was that they experienced love differently to me. So it scares and disturbs me, that with CoE, I just cannot see it. Usually I'm pretty good at seeing WHY people feel a certain way even if I don't share those feelings. But with CoE, there are just a few things that I can't get past (the hug, Jack not acknowledging Ianto in the quarry, the couch, Jack not thanking Ianto for the coat). And it's hard, because I WANT to see it, you know? I want to be able to see what you see, and I don't know why I can't.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You didn't imply that, I was more making the point that in the midst of your discussion which was focused elsewhere you sort of accidentally demonstrated that the three of us are an excellent case study for just how not monolithic queer people are.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

and I don't think the latter reaction came solely from people who were simply after canon slash.

No, I get that, I didn't mean to suggest that - I'm not questioning the legitimacy of people who didn't enjoy CoE, more the usefulness of drawing conclusions about the value of CoE based on a comparison between two things that are not the same, and not trying to be the same? In order for one to be doing it better, they'd have to be doing the same thing. To illustrate with an extreme example, it feels to me a bit like critiquing Silence of the Lambs for not being a romantic comedy; it's hard to pull anything meaningful out of that other than that said critic apparently likes rom coms better than horror. I take your point about the false advertising thing, and of course you're entitled to analyse what works better for you, but I think there's so much different about the context and genre and presentation, it's impossible to boil it down and judge your response (or anyone's response) based on just one factor of queerness which is hardly a simplistic concept in itself.

IDK; I think what I'm trying to say in a very TL;DR way is, hey, it's complicated. But this is an issue that interests me because much has been made of the queerness of, and the queer response to, CoE, and the canonical slash aspect (which, slash and queerness are not the same thing, and the point where they intersect has been the epicentre for some vast and epic fail) (Not from you, I hasten to add; this is just what drives me to want to poke at these issues, to help me articulate what I think is problematic). I think the thing about queerness is that it doesn't exist in a vaccuum, it's an immensely complicated and intersecting thing; it's impossible to make absolute or simplistic statements about it, or to unpack it from its context. I couldn't possibly tell you the degree to which I responded to J/I as a queer person and the degree to which I responded to it for a million other reasons to do with personal genre and narrative preference; I don't think anyone could.

It's right that this sort of thing should be difficult, and there may well be no One True Answer anyway.

Heh, I feel like there being no One True Answer ought to be the only thing that's not contraversial about this kind of issue! I hope I don't come off like I'm trying to give you the answers; that's obviously not my place, I'm just batting ideas at you.