*giggles and iz 12*

Textbook is talking about bottom-up models.

... I am in no way thinking Jack/Ianto thoughts here.
nope.
not.

... and I'm not fooling anyone either.
*sigh*


Am also having recurring distraction via swimming pool, speedos, and Jack's likely lack thereof.
Though there is plenty of room to imagine SF people not knowing how to swim.
Which could lead to swimming lessons.
With Ianto, of course.

... which would lead to things almost entirely not involving actual swimming. I can hear Ianto in my head making a slightly breathless sarcastic remark about that. Briefly. In passing.




Cognitive processes that are primarily determined by an external stimulus have been referred to as 'bottom-up' or 'data-driven' processes, while cognitive processes that are primarily determined by the application of past knowledge have been referred to as 'top-down' or 'conceptually-driven' processes. [...] one's impression of a character is formed in the interaction between the text and the interpreter's background knowledge; in other words, as a result of both bottom-up and top-down processes.

See, I can get from *that* to porn. That's *talent* that is.



Also, highlighters should just stop running out. I realise the amount of book I've used them on can now be measured in feet, but I can't replace them at two in the morning so they're going to keep on working thanks.


Also also, I like this book. It refers to actual empirical research. It snarks about Freudian psychoanalytic criticism: it is remote from the 'ordinary' psychological processes readers bring to texts, and it ignores about 100 years of research in mainstream psychology.
I've been saying that for years, and yet haven't studied enough psych to say it with numbers, sort of thing. It do wind me up. I had to put down a perfectly promising book because it went all Freudian. Things do not actually prove their opposites except in Bizarro world, and attraction to women, however obsessive, does not in fact *mean* sekrit attraction to men, though it can as a jumping off point for fic because fic has rather different standards of evidence. So basically I think Freud has a lot to answer for and psychoanalytic criticism really needs to study psych a bit more and yet textbooks do so rarely agree with me.
So this one is fun.

In a rather dry and repetitive way.


Maybe the pink highlighter still works. I'm not generally a big fan of pink.

Bunnies attack in many guises...

This plot bunny generator brought to you by bandages

I was there looking at the boo-boo kisses, but
some of them happen in Beef or Bacon shapes.

I'm looking at them, looking at Owen's sense of humour, and thinking about Countrycide...

thoughts at four in the morning

comprehension is cyclic: what you see influences what you know, and what you know influences what you see



is from the Language and Characterisation book I'm reading (laboriously slowly)

I keep wanting to apply the whole thing to Owen and the Large Arguing About 1-01
(Because we're not all seeing the same thing, or bringing the same prior knowledge to it, so of course there's going to be arguing, and about a charged topic it gets to be Large Arguing)

but can also apply to Torchwood 'verse and the basic perception issues mundanes face there.

( Read more... )

more on Torchwood 1-04

So I'm having a thought, and it may need to wander around the page a bit and be repeated at some time not 0520 before it entirely makes sense.

but

A thought about 1-04, Ianto, and what is obvious inside and outside the 'verse.

And also about who is right, and when, and how.

( Read more... )

So after that idea wandered around all over the place, my conclusion is:

It's not as obvious to Ianto.

It's a foregone conclusion to Jack.

And to the audience it depends what genre we think we're in.



From no character's value set is the final solution the ideal one, but it may be the only one they can manage with their current resources. But. I'm still not sold on that - there were possibilities not tried at all. And that makes Jack just that bit darker, and Ianto not entirely wrong at all.

(no subject)

The problem with thinking of Torchwood, or any team of grownups, in family-comparison terms, is it all ends up looking kind of icky when they date. So they aren't family. They're grown non related individuals who can shag with no major taboos in the way.

That said.

Jack is the patriarch in charge, with a weird mix of old school authority and newer flexibility.

Ianto is the mommy. He brings the food and tidies up after everyone and drives people to school where they need to go in the big soccer mom car SUV and he's invisible until he does something unexpected and everyone thinks he generally Doesn't Do That, except really he does.
He may also be the baby. I read someone mentioning the napkin, and the being the youngest.
The contradiction reminds me of Nora in A Doll's House in ways that make me *facepalm* and wish my brain had more tracks.

Owen is the bolshy teenager who throws his weight around like he should be the boss now but is actually shit scared of winning.

Tosh is the dutiful daughter, doing what is expected of her.

Gwen is... new. Outsider. Why she brings a new perspective to all of it.



and mostly I say this to make me giggle.

and because Ianto needs a hug and is the woobie but he does all these stereotype-housewife jobs too as well as the running around and shooting parts so he isn't a baby or even the baby.



He may be the stepmother that the teenagers don't respect. Maybe the mid-life crisis trophy wife.

... you know, if you want to be really cracky and AU about it and have the same sense of humour as me ...

un-fuzzy the thinking

I'm reading Torchwood meta and I'm wanting to poke it with stuff we learned in class.
Specifically the important difference between thing stated and things implied/infered.
Stated = in the text. Jack states that Ianto looks good in a suit.
Implied/infered = some readers can get ideas from this. We infer that Jack fancies Ianto.
Mushing everything together makes for very fuzzy arguments.
While there is room to differ about what is actually stated - I still need to do those alternate subtitle transcripts, for a start, and not everyone uses the subtitles - there is *immense* room to infer different things even from the same data.

Also? First time we see a thing =/= first time a thing happens; unless we're told it's a first, and even then there's often room for it to be untrue.

also also, whatever the rank structure of Torchwood is, we're in the dark about anyone except Captain and 2nd, as it's never been stated.

There's nothing to say Ianto is last. There's nothing to say the others even have relative ranks. There's Owen being a git about Ianto being the tea boy, but there's also Ianto giving orders and Gwen not quibbling about it. More than one way to read that.

Owen being rude to Ianto could be because Owen is rude (an aspect of character), because Owen is really wound up (emotion), because Owen wanted a particular reaction (manipulation), or because Owen was in fact stating the truth as he saw it (observation). It could be evidence of higher rank throwing privilege around, or it could be lower rank acting up cranky to get privilege. Ianto's reactions suggest Owen's claim of 2nd place is probably truthful, but there's so much else going on right then, plausible character explanations, plausible emotion or manipulation, that he could just be letting it slide to get a result he wants/fears, or not feeling sure enough of his ground after 1-04 to really push the point yet.

Getting stuck into one specific interpretation collapses the complexity of the source text and actually leaves you with much less fun characters.

Trying to write fanfic, sometimes you have to pick one version and go with it. Other times you can preserve some of the original ambiguities. Different effects either way.

Writing meta?

Why say 'this means' when you can have 'this can be read' and a whole bunch of different possibilities open up?



Mostly though it bugs me when people state things as equally true whether they're quoting or interpreting or, as far as I can tell, making stuff up.




PS There is no 'real' Ianto, he is a made up character, an assemblage of signs, linguistic and otherwise, performed in a particular way in the broadcast version. Cannot write about 'real' and 'persona' Ianto, is all a persona put on by actor. Character has more than one face? Cool. Word for this is not 'real'. Possibly 'work' and 'relaxed', but not 'real'.
/picky
... who am I kidding, I never /picky.

Ianto jobs

Receptionist
Driving
Cleaning (including computers and corpses)
Looks good in a suit
Food
Coffee
Intelligence analysis (always turns up with the useful data)
Secure archives

base security?

he's the one that stays behind and looks after things

and it would explain why it were easy to hide stuff, if it's his job to see to what gets in there.


(as pointed out in passing in a post I otherwise entirely disagree with, Jack did ask Ianto to reverse the lockdown in 1-08, not any of the others)


Tosh jobs include translation programs, computers, and enough forensics or medecine to be useful around corpses and at the hospital. Maybe more lab equipment than actual people, that would group her skills closer together. Only Owen qualified to work on the living.

Owen = medicine doctor, and don't he let people know it. Anyone leaves off his title he adds it.

Tosh is also entitled, but don't do that.

Gwen = police, mostly walking around, bit of victim support according to the website.

Jack is the boss of everyone. Also knows more alien tech than the rest. And can pilot a spaceship. And knows the future a bit. And knows too much history, mostly when mentioning WWII.


Gwen and Owen have fairly narrow focus and well defined skills, Tosh and Ianto are a bit more generalist but in different ways, and Jack knows everything as convenient (Greek mythology? Because that comes up so often! Mind you, educated white guy for the last few thousand years has a certain expected cultural base. Can see it being useful to know, and also being available to read when the reading was skinny.) Or possibly Jack's clever wrist computer does and tells his head. You never know.

bunny bunny bunny

*note to self, upload the 'drowning in bunnies' icon*

Bunny of the day: You know those PTerry heroes that just got older and better at not dying yet?

Imagine a version of Torchwood that were kind of like that - just getting older and smarter and better at what they're doing.

Could be TW2 or TW4, but could also be just some people meant to reflect our Torchwood without actually being a Torchwood themselves. Or maybe former staff, from when retcon wasn't part of the retirement package. Relatively new invention. They probably didn't execute everyone before then. At the very least there would have been some sneaky enough to get away.

The older they get, the less they like it. And they're all, for their seperate reasons, quite sure there is an alternative.

Immortality questers. Tad bit dangerous.

So I'm thinking, when the Doctor fixed the nanogenes thing, there was a whole crowd of remarkably healthy people left standing around, some of them inelegantly trying to cover things up.

If they'd all been optimised, it's plausible some of them could live quite a long time.
It is of course plausible that some of them would still be alive and well by regular means.

Could be there's someone who knew Jack.

We the audience have seen how Jack handles a former lover who got old. By lying to them.

But what about if they knew the truth?

And Ianto hasn't seen at all.

So: Former lover of Jack's who was involved in that gas mask incident? Oh look, we have a one of those, how handy! :-)

The actual plot part of this as yet remains a bit skinny. I've just got some conversations in my head, mostly while everyone's in cells so they can hear them. And by 'everyone' I was meaning 'everyone except Tosh' because I noticed I hadn't thought of anything for her to say and it would be kind of cool if she was the one charging to the rescue.

It's most frugal if people get locked up within Torchwood, but the cells there happen in pairs, yesno? So Ianto could be in the cell next to Jack but the other two wouldn't.

Putting them in pairs in cells has no logical justification. However obvious the porn setup would be.

And it would be kind of fun to have a secret base full of very elderly experts in their fields. It could have a secret entrance made to look like a care home. I don't know if it would be underground or more of a tower, sort of thing, but locking Jack up in an old people's home would be quite amusing.

And then there would be Jack being at his charming best with now-elderly-lover, and him thinking he was taking the piss, and Jack kind of surprised. Because the weirdest thing he shagged was about a thousand years old and mostly made of frills and slime so really a few wrinkles are not that offputting.

... I could maybe have him phrase it a bit different with the other guy around. Very few people like being compared to slimey frills.


So to invent the rest of the group you take the existing Torchwood people and fast forward them 40-60 years. Only that would make them all of another era, so there would be attitude clash and possibly bitterness about opportunities or possibly demonstrating that there were opportunities even then, depends. Probably a bit of both because we've got a whole team to play with.

I kind of like the idea of the Ianto equivalent being a 50 year old woman. Because she's the youngest. And she makes tea.

... Gwen the compassionate could be the nearly retired lady who runs the care home. Cares very much about all her people. Tried to do what was best for them. This involved orderly schedules and seperate rooms. So now she's mind controlled and the residents run her like clockwork instead.

... okay, that may amuse only me.

So anyways, fun with character stuff, haven't actually invented a plot yet.

Suggestions for improving Torchwood

... morally as an organisation or aesthetically as a show?

either way:

Have them maybe be the good guys sometimes? A little? It could be fun.

Characterisation = yaay. Gaps are all very well but we rather like it when they're filled in.

Jack/Ianto=yaay, and not just because it's canon slash... okay, I'd put up with a hell of a lot just for that, but because it's potentially interesting I'll actually like it too.

We've seen everyone fall apart. I asked for them to fall together, and we got that too. So now let me be really really specific: Rise together. Teamwork and... I don't know, but something that doesn't leave them all quivering wrecks of danger-to-themselves-and-others.

I realise 'love conquers all' could be considered a bit shallow, but there could be isolated pockets of 'love does in fact make the world seem quite a bit better' in amongst the mess.

It's nice that characters have flaws. If they only have flaws it gets a bit boring.


Shows I have stopped watching: BSG, because you know the worst thing will always happen and it got boring. SGA, because you know they'll always screw up and quite often die and that got a bit boring too.

Things that Torchwood is in danger of having happen?

... yeah.


They didn't screw up Jack/Ianto the way I was worried they would.
As soon as there starts being more canon there sadly starts being more opportunities to do it.
So.
No backstabbing plz.
They don't have to be happy, but I'd rather like to avoid evil-insane-deadness.

... actually, sod it, they should be happy. I could write them happy-yet-conflicted. There's grand themes to mine with the conflict between divergent versions of duty. There's all sorts of nifty to get into with the differences in age, power, experience, expectation, culture, and, well, everything. It could take many, many seasons. And through it all they can be having raging arguments, occasional pointing guns at each other, disobedience, and still at the end of the day really good sex. Just... they don't go to bed angry, they can do whatever they like all day, and it still counts as adult every which way.

What I'm saying is writers who are better than me could write a relationship that is complicated, doomed-by-mortality, on opposite sides of major issues and yet with a core of love that gets them through it in an entirely unsaccharine way. Seriously. I'm quite sure.

I've got about 30 sequential plot bunnies for RFJ, which is Giles/Ethan and has massive philosophical differences and incidental being deadness in the way. 30 would be another three seasons on Torchwood. That's halfway to forever in TV time.

... I'm having visions of Torchwood running as long as Doctor Who.
... oooooh, happy visions.
... happy, porn filled visions ...


to run that long they'd probably have to swap out characters, like DW, or SG1 for that matter.

Who could be usefully added to the team?

I'm not at the point I'd want to drop anyone, but adding someone new could be a fun game.


... actually the first one that springs to mind is my MarySue-me. Because working the desk at the world's least popular tourist information office might be within my skills. You know, if I could use my talking computer for the speaking parts.

... oh bugger, I need to order my talking computer. Right, enough of this...