sundries

[rm]

Patty's favorite movie blog is raising money for the American Cancer Society and she'd like you to participate.

Due to scheduling complexities that began with the cruise and have lasted for six months, Patty and I are having Christmas 2009 today.

The second part of the comic GDL wrote for Torchwood Magazine is out and making the rounds. It's called "Shrouded" and is ridiculously interesting on more than few levels: including fan-creator dialogue, meta commentary, the death stuff I'm doing (I'll be talking about it in my presentation at Dragon*Con on mourning responses to illustrated narratives), what is canon in a narrative universe where infinite AU's are cannon, etc.

As a comic itself, I don't care that much, but I fully admit to not really having the receptor sites for this sort of thing. As dialogue though, it's AMAZING. I'm very curious to see how it's going to be received. I suspect messily. Anyway, props to all involved.

News-sweep later; swamped now.

Comments

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it yet (and may never, funeral scenes are very much not my thing and that's one of the first set of panels I saw) but I gather that a lot of the initial response is ... what was going on? And from a range of readers, not just folks who seem to not get that the whoinverse is timey-wimey.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The funeral scene is brief and sort of completely not relevant to the rest of the WTFery of the thing. And what's going on makes sense, it's just... why is this going on, and both from Watsonian and Dolyist perspectives it's sorta of "woah, WHAT?"

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know. It was like three panels but I'm incredibly intolerant of grief – especially exploiting romantic grief as catharsis/a Disney ride entertainment. I've lived, and am living, too much of it and it's not romantic and it's not cathartic. I've gotten old enough to realize I don't have to tolerate it and tragedies are not intrinsically better work than victories. (/rant)

I'm sure I'll read it whenever a scan of the entire thing is out – I'm always curious when people are like .. this story doesn't make sense, to see if I can figure it out. I'm just fussy, still. It takes me a long time to get over negative emotions like grief and emotional pain and suffering.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

i just read the whole thing yesterday and... the story itself was a bit too rushed, i think, like it needed more parts in the middle to fully explore everything in there, but the funeral and the "grief" parts are not very central to it... well, not really - i think you should give it a read

there are scans on torch_wood

Christmas 2009

[supergee.livejournal.com]

nellorat's sisters and the three of us beat you by a couple of weeks.

Merry Christmas!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Re: Merry Christmas!

[siege-ofcahoots.livejournal.com]

Love it! That reminds me of "Poodle with a Mohawk"

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

N.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Happy Christmas!

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

An op-ed I think you'll appreciate, if you haven't seen it:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/lady-power/

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

Linked via friends-of-friends, a public arts/spaces project that I suspect you might find intriguing: http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2010/keytothecity/

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes on the what is canon issue. It's something that I want to explore as well. For me, as a literary theorist, it's perhaps the most significant question of narratives that evoke fan fiction. What is it? How do people work with it? Why does it remain important to fan fiction writers, even those who write AU. I think it's the central question of fandom: Why does canon matter as a concept?

[rm.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the comic yet? It's really, REALLY intriguing for the questions it asks outside the narrative about what the narrative is and who controls it and why.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Not yet.

I'm in London at the moment with my iPad, which can't really handle zip files.

[(Anonymous)]

Canon is the holy scripture, while fanworks merely preach. Psychologically, fandom functions as religion does.

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to hear the details of your reading of that comic. I think it's interesting that the guy who played the character relates to him much the way many fans do - as the locus of a kind of counterplot.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

Merry Christmas!

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

I've just finished reading the comic.

Having heard Gareth speak at cons, I can see his fingerprints all over this. The inclusion of John, Ianto having the potential to make a wide range of choices from selfless to terrible, etc.

I kind of loved his Owen more than I should, and that "what would I do without you?" moment was not cruelty free. On the other hand, we do see a funeral, and more of what John was up to.

(And whoa! Ianto in a mandarin collar!)

[rm.livejournal.com]

And much of it raises more questions than it answers if you take it as canon.

1. the mandarin collar.
2. the funeral, because I feel that CoE suggested pretty strongly that Jack walked out those doors and that was that.... not at any of the relevant funerals.
3. Right, so Ianto does the right thing, retcons himself, dies.... but wait, WHUT?

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

1. Blame the mandarin collar on the future. That's what everybody wears in future dystopias.

2. I can go either way on this. Jack's the sort of man who gives up and gives up hard when he hits his limit, but Gwen's pretty good at wheedling him into five more minutes. It's possible he had loose ends to tie up before he walked out. Or, if one embraces the payoff, the funeral doesn't necessarily exist in the same precise timeline as CoE, and Jack stays.

3. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, many-worldy?

[rm.livejournal.com]

2. Yeah, I think this is AU to CoE, and arguably is intended to be a response to the desired fannish AU -- i.e., you don't get to keep Ianto and keep him good and keep him with Jack.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Now I'm playing "choose any two" AU games with the following:

Good Ianto
Jack/Ianto
Live Ianto

[rm.livejournal.com]

Right! It's like the fandom version of Good/Honest/Necessary, an observation that should win a prize for "metaphors that shouldn't work, and yet...."

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

So to choose any two:

- Evil Ianto, who is alive, and with Jack
- Good Ianto, who is dead, and with Jack (CoE)
- Good Ianto, who is alive, but not with Jack

The comic's ending, though, implies that you can also have just one of the three:

- Good Ianto, who is dead, and not with Jack
- Evil Ianto, who is alive, and not with Jack (the comic)
- Evil Ianto, who is dead, and with Jack

I suppose you could also have all/nothing:

- Evil Ianto, who is dead, and not with Jack
- Good Ianto, who is alive, and is with Jack

It's like its own little prompt table.

("Evil" is, obv. shorthand, and not a proper judgment...)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I love that you edited this to protect Ianto's honor in terms of moral alignment.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Look, the man's wearing a mandarin collar. He rocks it, no mistake, but to cast him as evil based soley on the sartorial codes of his future dystopia...

(Give him a goatee, on the other hand, and the case is clearer.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

It wasn't the mandarin collar. It was shagging the chick even John Hart though was bad news!

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

Ah, but!

That could have been a spite shag. The enemy of one's enemy, after all. John Hart is an unreliable source! Oh sure, there's Rhys involved, and surely he's more reliable, but that's just an imposition of a particular value system kicking in.

She did sort of creep up on him in the car with a knife, though.

Evil = stubbornly seeking to prove the superiority of one's worldview or biases in spite of reality?