sundries

[rm]

Hey, when I say don't be assholes the correct response is not ignoring people's boundaries and/or making DIAF remarks. I am not happy.

Fuck Yeah, Skeksis!

I find the idea of "Things That Are Not Like Guns" weirdly hilarious. Last night Patty and I had a long discussion about to what degree sharks are, or are not, like guns. Sharks are, for the record, not like guns.

HPOA girl likely fake. Some iteration of just that thing shows up every couple of years, and the story is always too perfect -- pretty chick (you side with her), industry people love to hate (Wall Street now, Internet start-ups then), with lots of expected sexism (it could be an after-school special!), culminating with an attack on some Internet phenomenon that annoys the fuck out of a lot of people (Farmville).

The flight attendant story is still real though.

And so is that of the guy who took his bus on a 1,300 mile detour.

Interesting story about the legality of 66 marriage licenses issues to same sex couples in New Mexico in 2004. They stand.

Mexico City same-sex marriages must be recognized as legal throughout Mexico.

And Costa Rica has ruled against a referendum that would take a vote on recognizing same-sex unions. The courts says such a vote would put LGBT at a disadvantage.

Is that your baby? About being mistake for the nanny in multi-racial families.

Patty sent this to me yesterday as "Horrifying Inception Find." There's really little more I can add, but I'll warn you it's a screen-shot of a Craigslist casual encounters ad, the language is NSFW, and it's in the category of dirty, dirty cosplay sex. I share because I care.

Rules for hats flumox hipsters: I don't care if your fedora cost $80, when you're inside, you take it off.

I hate this fucking Jack/Auggie fic. Okay, I've finally got Auggie's voice, and I know where it's going and what is already ridiculously wrong with the whole thing and faily and needs to be fixed. But increasingly, I feel like I can't write this fic without making a mess. Every online conversation I see about Auggie on blogs related to disabiity issues has about six different sides. Which is to say, I don't think it's possible to produce this story without being really offensive to multiple someones.

That said, I'm still beating my head against the thing, because I think the pairing and the story make sense and that it should be possible to tell a good story that isn't faily. So, if you're tuned in to Covert Affairs, and particularly if you're viewing it from a living with disabilities perspective, and have a comment about what they are doing right or wrong with Auggie (aside from the actor not actually being blind, since that's a perfectly reasonable topic for conversation, but one that won't help me solve this story) that you'd like to share, I am so all ears. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Speaking of Covert Affairs -- how great was this week's episode? Jai suddenly gets interesting and isn't just the bad guy. I don't hate the idea of a possible Jai, Auggie, Annie love triangle (oh god, someone write me that threesome). The gossipy relationship premise of the show is feeling more organic even if it's still too straight for my taste. The women kick ass. And pretty much everything is awesome except for the whole thng with Annie's former beau that I just don't care about at all.

Which brings us to White Collar -- now that was an episode. And Peter is just so effortlessly the boss of Neal, it's kinda hilarious. And I loved the high-class repoman chick. And Neal's look of being nauseated in the face of handling a gun, and pretty much the whole thing which felt like a very New York episode. Much love. I still don't care about Kate though, even if the part of the story about the FAA tapes was actually well done.

Comments

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

I've always found that episode a bit puzzling because there are seemingly no repercussions for the real Captain Jack Harkness. (We don't see him after Jack and Tosh leave, obviously, but at no point does it get suggested that kissing another man in public was not perhaps the safest thing to have been doing.*)

In response to this & eandh99's comment below - I had also assumed, the first time, that the dancers had narratively frozen. They HADN'T - some of them turn to watch what's going on. That may be an error on the part of the actors, and not what the director's intent was, but it's what happens, and lends a whole different interpretation to the proceedings...

After watching that episode several times, my current theory (given the hostility of some of TRJH's own men, even PRIOR to the may-or-may-not-have-been-seen kiss) is that he's shot down by "accidental" friendly fire. Esp. given the comments in another ep, that he'd successfully fought off 3? German planes and was making his way back to the base when shot down.

A little extra twist of the knife for Jack - and I've also thought, he knows it, he knows he's responsible, on seeing how sad he is when he comes back.

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I always understood the crowd as watching them and had no idea people understood them as frozen. I suppose I could take this as an excuse to re-watch Torchwood...

A little extra twist of the knife for Jack - and I've also thought, he knows it, he knows he's responsible, on seeing how sad he is when he comes back.

I've forgotten, but does Jack know the real Jack Harkness is going to be killed the next day? If he does, then he may see the whole thing as not mattering because the other Jack is going to die anyway. (Thus triggering a whole causality loop thing with respect to your theory.) Of course, if he doesn't know, what's he doing kissing him? I probably need to re-watch this episode and think about it some more.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

Esp. given the comments in another ep, that he'd successfully fought off 3? German planes and was making his way back to the base when shot down.

I'm incorrect - he actually makes those comments to Tosh in the SAME episode. He also says TRJH will be killed in a routine training exercise the following day. So yes, he is *exactly* aware of what is going to happen, down to "they heard the screams over the radio" as the plane burst into flames.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

As I've discussed with regard to the CJH episode a number of times elsewhere, it's very complicated from a historical perspective. First, from the Doylist view, it is absolutely clear that the makers of both CJH and The Empty Child have absolutely no qualms about twisting legal reality to make a good story given what they do about the blackout in both episodes; the "nice bottom" scene in TEC (in which Jack and other air force personnel stand outlined against a lighted room on an un-blacked out balcony in the middle of an air raid) and the street door scenes where light spills out from the dancehall onto the street consistently through CJH before and after an airraid) simply could not have happened. About the only good thing about the Gatiss Dalek episode in this series of DW, incidentally, is that it recognises that black out precautions were both Serious Business and widely observed. And being arrested for blatantly disregarding black out precautions is a "would definitely" have happened, not a "might possibly" (unlike any possible breach of the Labouchere Amendment to the Sexual Offences Act 1885).

However, even more tellingly, if you read something like Berube's Coming Out Under Fire you find a pattern of very complex treatment of homoerotic and homosocial behaviours during WWII with a high and unexpected degree of tolerance. Berube found his researches and access to archives blocked by the Authorities who were trying to support current practice on the basis of a supposed military tradition that was actively contradicted by the evidence of what happened on the ground at the time.

Which I suppose adds up to; there's no particular reason for it to be friendly fire (especially since that would have deprived the Allies of a valuable plane at a time when these were like gold dust) and it's somewhat projecting a 21st century mindset onto a mid 20th century situation to read it in those terms.

thank you for the very interesting reply!

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

First, from the Doylist view, it is absolutely clear that the makers of both CJH and The Empty Child have absolutely no qualms about twisting legal reality

I'm deducing from this statement that "Doylist" means something to do with AC Doyle and authorial perspective, but just to let you know, it's an unfamiliar term to me. :)

the "nice bottom" scene in TEC (in which Jack and other air force personnel stand outlined against a lighted room on an un-blacked out balcony in the middle of an air raid) and the street door scenes where light spills out from the dancehall onto the street consistently through CJH before and after an airraid)

YES!! I'm SO glad someone else noticed this.. :D A relatively minor quibble, but one that's bothered me consistently. TEC is worse to me, because the space appears to be SO open and SO lit up, and it looks like half the city is lit up in the shots with Rose. But that may be my little TV rendering bombs/fires badly.

Which I suppose adds up to; there's no particular reason for it to be friendly fire (especially since that would have deprived the Allies of a valuable plane at a time when these were like gold dust) and it's somewhat projecting a 21st century mindset onto a mid 20th century situation to read it in those terms.

I freely admit that, while an amateur historian, neither the military nor the 1940's are in my particular areas of extensive research (I'm a Victorianist by hobby.) :D Your point about the absolute value of a plane (and, I suppose, a good soldier) is well taken, and one I should have thought of.

I'm probably projecting an American, rather than a 21st-century, viewpoint onto the whole thing, since Britain has always been at least *somewhat* more socially tolerant (or at least more willing to look the other way) than America, even if the laws on the books were stricter. Given the whole public-school/unspoken-schoolboy-'pash' dynamic that novelists like Forster & Waugh openly depict around WWI, I'm not surprised at all that that unspoken tolerance carries through 25 years later.

That said, I think I'm correct in stating that there is also an un-nuanced undercurrent of hostility in the episode, reflected in a few characters: George (Harkness's lieutenant?), who goes after Tosh, but also openly displays disdain for 'James Harper' and eventually for the real Jack Harkness; TRJH's girlfriend, whose name I have forgotten, but who is both uncertain about and hostile towards 'James', until he pushes Jack at her; and to a lesser extent, the couple who finally interrupt 'James' and Jack, requesting access to 'lovers' corner'. Given that there's already been one violent episode earlier in the evening, it's not unreasonable to think that, had James made it back to base, there might be repercussions from the same violent underling, next time with buddies.

Whether this is dramatic narrative or historical accuracy, as you have pointed out, is definitely problematized; I'm cheerfully willing to admit that my projection is based on thinking like a screenwriter rather than a historian, and I'm now curious to research it from the historian's perspective. :D

Re: thank you for the very interesting reply!

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Sorry re terminology: the terms "Doylist" and "Watsonian" are used in my corner of fandom quite a bit to distinguish different modes of interpretation and, in particular, to deal with apparent inconsistencies in bits of canon. A "Watsonian" approach tries to find an explanation within the world itself so, for example, if one episode says that the original Captain Jack Harkness "never turned up for duty one day" and another says "he was shot down on a routine training exercise" the Watsonian explanation is that Torchwood's Jack went in and buggered the records for his own purposes, whereas the Doylist explanation is that Tregenna either chose not to follow the explanation given in Everything Changes for what happened to original Jack or was unaware of it.

Some really bitter disputes in fandom can actually be seen as one group taking an (unspoken) Doylist position against another group holding an (unspoken) Watsonian view.

While I can see that there might well have been repercussions had Harkness got back to base, the situation is extremely complicated; first, of course, the US are not officially at war and he's a volunteer with the RAF, which really would give his C/O a headache on the official side. Unofficially, who knows? But then I didn't think the violent incident on the dance floor was that realistic either.