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

[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.