sundries

[rm]

Currently, we are waiting for our next Buffy and Angel box sets to arrive. I believe Patty expects them today.

Plans! Are coming together. I have generalized knowledge now of when Patty will be visiting her family in Ohio (yay, she won't miss Pride, yay) and What to Expect at the Conference is becoming more clear. I've given up worry; it's all constructed paranoia anyway.

Yesterday James Moran tweeted something funny and bitter about enjoying the exciting news before the Internet came and ruined it all, and I told him the Internet was very, very happy and then he tweeted back at me about his dinner, and that was all lovely. And then, of course, by the time it was dinner time here, someone was wrong on the Internet. Which, in fact, doesn't mean anyone was wrong at all, just that conversations had started to be like that. Oh, non-canceled TV show fandoms you are hard, hard on my heard.

For me, I'm grateful for an S4, because my brain instinctively finds a way to explain shit the show doesn't/won't. Will we see a grieving process from Jack about Ianto and Stephen? Well, lord knows how many years it will have been for him, so what we're graced with will likely be very small. However, seeing him go on is such a better feeling (I think! remember how I said Day 5 couldn't hurt worse than Day 4?) than Ianto's death being the end of the particular fictional world that's Torchwood.

Also, damn I'm glad to know what's going on with the show before I tackle the chapter proposal I'm doing. The upcoming season of unknownness has some meta awesome to it for that.

Anyway. Torchwood. We all feel stuff and in many cases bring a lot of random expertises and inside information to the rumour table. I'm going to try not to play Someone Is Wrong on the Internet, because, of course, that someone might well be me.

I am reading the Doctor Who book with the Neanderthal in it.

I have started another kink_bingo fic, but with a lot of work on my plate, WIAD, and the fact that more than any of that I want some quality Patty time especially now that ti's not too hot to think out, you get to wait for a while.

On the subject of classical education.

Lost WWII battlefield found.

Other links of newsy interest as I find them.

Comments

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, I'm starting the very same book!

I read The Stealers of Dreams and thought it was decent, although the scenes at the end kind of fell flat. Then I started on The Deviant Strain, but it began in exactly the same way as the inferior Torchwood novels -- dull, grinding style, a minor character I have no reason to care about dies horribly in order to get the plot into motion -- so I switched over to Only Human.

So far, I'm enjoying the style of Only Human. Plus, it's packed full of fun Jack innuendo.

I posted exuberantly about S4 TWICE yesterday, I just couldn't help myself, it's such good news.

[svollga.livejournal.com]

I liked Only Human a lot, though out of the three books about Tardis-a-trois, I like The Stealers of Dreams the most (which might be because it has some of my plot kinks in it).
The Deviant Strain is... well. Not good. Also, I'm Russian, so it's twice as 'not good' for me.

[azn-jack-fiend.livejournal.com]

Yikes. Hearing that, I'm especially reluctant to go back to The Deviant Strain. I hate Russian stereotypes. The cardboard Russian villains were the only part of the TW novel Trace Memory I didn't like... they almost ruined an otherwise excellent book for me.

The plot for Stealers of Dreams was pretty good! In the beginning, it felt a LOT like a satire by James Morrow called "City of Truth". I wouldn't be surprised if the idea was based on that. But the premise departs about halfway through, and I didn't see some of the twists coming.

[svollga.livejournal.com]

Re: The Deviant Strain: Oh yeah, Russian stereotypes.
It wasn't even that they got whatever they wrote about wrong - it's that every time Russia\former Soviet Union appears in any Western book/film, it's either villains or some other ugliness and danger. Sometimes I want to ask the authors if they know that Russia is a more-or-less modern state with electricity and computers and normal people who have normal jobs? That it's not only mobs or totalitarian ugliness or bears in the streets? Really.
I haven't read Trace Mamory because when I was looking through it in the shop, I saw it has Russian villains and decided against buying it.

I haven't read "City of Truth", but I liked the kind of anti-utopia they created in the book, and how it was all explained. Also, in that book, every one of three characters had something to do! In The Deviant Strain, Jack is mostly running around having a guilty conscience. (Or so it felt at the moment. I've read all three books quite a while ago.)

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Speaking of reaction twitters, I'm not sure what purpose tweeting to John Barrowman that they're not going to watch the new series he's "over the moon" about is supposed to accomplish. *shakes head*

What does that even mean? "I'm a fan of yours but not a big enough fan to watch something you're in if another guy isn't in it too", or something?

Way to go, fandom. Way to go.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Missed that bit of Twitter fun, and glad of it.

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about S4, but I'm damned curious to see wth they've got planned, even if it ends up being a train wreck, which part of me fears it will be.

Only Human is awesome! It's also the DW book in which Jack is the most Jack-like of the lot, I think.

[rm.livejournal.com]

So far I'm interested in Jack's keeping a journal on Das. It's the only canon place other than the Captain's Blog that we see someone try to find Jack's internal monologue.

[firefly124.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, and I hadn't thought of it from that angle. What stands out in memory more to me is Das' interpretation of Jack.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

So far I'm interested in Jack's keeping a journal on Das.

Where is this info from? Twitter? I really should get back onto that, huh?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Nah, an old Nine/Jack/Rose tie-in novel.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay, thanks!

[elisi]

For me, I'm grateful for an S4, because my brain instinctively finds a way to explain shit the show doesn't/won't.
Same her. Fanwanking is an artform. :)

Will we see a grieving process from Jack about Ianto and Stephen? Well, lord knows how many years it will have been for him, so what we're graced with will likely be very small.
My husband - who dislikes Torchwood, and was only lured into watching CoE because I assured him that it was actually, truly, good - said that the way CoE *should* have ended was with Gwen and Rhys looking up a the stars and then for Jack to re-appear, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and with a pinata donkey and a banjo in his arms, all 'Why the long faces?' because for him it had been 3 million years or something. (I am SO GLAD I watched it on my own first. Because I don't think I could have laughed the first time round...)

Anyway, I thought CoE was the perfect ending, but I sincerely hope that fandom can now move on. *crosses fingers*

[dr-is-in.livejournal.com]

Half of the fandom has me wanting to bash my head against the wall in frustration. Its the people declaring that they KNOW whats going to happen in season 4 and that they hate it already and aren't going to watch. I have to bite my tongue to keep from snarking back at them that why don't they wait until we get some actual info on the series storyline before they make idiots of themselves.

[hab318princess.livejournal.com]

You'll enjoy Only Human... it's full of Jack and quite funny observations on humanity - I personally loved it... I've been trying to re-read the Deviant Strain and got stuck, so maybe I need to abandon and go to Only Human

and yeah, the reactions to S4 were/are interesting

[pocketmouse]

"...Ianto's death being the end of the particular fictional world that's Torchwood."

What do you mean by this? Because all the interpretations I can think of don't jive with my experience of Torchwood, so I'm not sure what you're saying.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm saying that if the show had not been renewed for another season it's easier for people to view Ianto's death as the end the world in the Torchwood universe. As the show will continue, life in that universe goes on, which creates a perspective about Ianto's death if, not from out here, then from in there.

[pocketmouse]

OK. Ianto's the character I'm least interested in, so it's hard for me to see the show in that light at all. I mean, we saw things after that, and his death wasn't the focal point of the story (it was an effect of the story, and a strong moment, but it didn't change the outcome in any way or anything like that), so for me it's got nothing to do with it being the end of Torchwood or not.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, but you've certainly see all that going on in fandom. For people that took it as a big hit -- whether that changed their feelings about the show or not -- the Torchwood universe continuing to tick on after that event has a meaning in one form or other.

[pocketmouse]

OK, so you mean the fannish universe? Because again, that means something different to me than the universe of the canonical show. I keep reading your phrasing as 'because Ianto is dead there is nothing else for this canon to do/explore that is worthwhile' and I'm sure that's not what you mean, but it's what I keep reading.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I don't know how to explain any more clearly that there is a both a Watsonian and Doylist universe in play here that exists differently for different fans and has a shape that is, for some of those fans, dependent on whether a S4 was going to happen or not. Maybe I'll try to come back to this later when I'm not on a deadline, but for now this is all I've got.

[pocketmouse]

OK. I just couldn't tell if you were talking about one or both. You were using a lot of absolutes, and majority is different from absolute, and it makes it hard for me to interpret what you're actually trying to say. I'm pretty sure I get what you are going for now, thanks for clarifying.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Intensely depressing newsy link: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2010-06-07.html

[rm.livejournal.com]

I KNOW. I'm sort of waiting on that front to make a post of its ownsome on that subject.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I never could get into the Doctor Who tie-in novels. I've read most of The Deviant Strain, Monsters Inside, and all of The Stealer of Dreams, and I suppose my biggest problems with them were that they didn't really have anything interesting or new to say about the Doctor himself, and I felt like I was reading a book with characters with the same names as those in the show, but not the actual same characters. I don't know, the feeling just wasn't there.