beccaelizabeth | (no subject)

Further to yesterday's comments on canon: I do have one idea on what clearly isn't canon - the stuff that never made it into the series / book / comic at all. If they were going to but didn't then they didn't, on purpose, and it therefore is an example of deliberately not true.

This applies to who would have died and what order the episodes go in. There are series where a channel messed up the order, but to the best of my knowledge Torchwood is not one of them. The episode order as seen on TV and DVDs is in fact the order they happened in. And as to who would have died, I don't really see how that's useful data at all, on account of they didn't.

Flattering to the actor data, yes, but not useful to the kind of construction of a shared reality fans do.

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From:

damalan.livejournal.com

I agree that information like that can't change canon, since as you rightly point out what goes out is what the writers and producers presumably want (at that point - since they can retcon events after the fact).

However additional information can help explain canon - why certain choices were made or not made. In extremis it can explain why something doesn't make sense, which saves needless attempts to reconcile irreconcilable facts. The obvious example here, using your own comments, is the significance of Ianto's rôle over the course of the first season; his absence may be as much due to the need to rework already accepted scripts as it is to do with the internal life of the character.

Plus we're fans; it's our job to interpret obscure comments, much as ancient auspexes examined entrails of sacrifices! ;)

From:

beccaelizabeth

It can only explain if you restort to writer-level explanations, which I always feel is not playing the game - Character-level stuff is where the fun lives. :-)

From:

damalan.livejournal.com

Ah, that's one thing on which we differ then. I am happy to pierce the fourth wall if it helps me understand. Call me greedy for 'truth' :)

From:

beccaelizabeth

I'm always looking for 'true-in-fic', stuff that stands up long enough to build a story on it, so writer-level truth don't tend to work so well.

From:

damalan.livejournal.com

Ah, that's the difference then. Since I am not a writer, I am happy to look at writer-level material as an explanation; I don't have to incorporate it into written work.

I wonder if it's also because I am a role-player. I am used to thinking about characters being an amalgam of in-character material and inevitable and necessary external factors (it's a game so it needs to comply with different reasonableness than fiction).

Just a thought.

From:

becky-h.livejournal.com

I'm a role-player, too, and while I'm really interested in the writers motivations - why they did what they did - I have to have the IC reason for what happened. I can't play without being given or inventing a plausible reason for the IC events to have happened.

It's interesting. I want to know why the writers did what they did or whatever external influences influenced them, but I still need a reason that the character would have behaved in _____ way. Sometimes, that's damned hard.

But I still have to have it, in my head if nowhere else.

From:

boji.livejournal.com

I still need a reason that the character would have behaved in _____ way. Sometimes, that's damned hard.

It's damn hard on this show because writer consistency - which is, would we not all agree, the foundation of any show? - has been lacking in season one so clues and foreshadowing as to character motivations are (in many cases) just not there.

From:

becky-h.livejournal.com

I role-play Jack. My solution thus far has been to make shit up wholesale when necessary, as long as it doesn't contradict canon. I know the writers aren't going to, and haven't, told me everything about why he does what he does (if they even know) but if I don't know what motivates him, I can't play him.

Not to say my way is the only way or anything ridiculous, it's just what I have to do to be able to keep him in my head and reacting to what's being thrown at him IC.

From:

damalan.livejournal.com

I can see your point (oh and hello fellow rôle-player - it's good to 'meet' another). My thought is if the truth is that the character has been made to behave a certain way by the writer/creator because of real-world considerations, then any reason I create or an in-character explanation is a fiction. It's a satisfying one, certainly, but it can never be the real truth of the matter.

Sorry, that almost sounds like a put down which it certainly isn't meant to be. I guess it's to do with not wanting to confuse a mental construct for reality. For example, I have played one particular character now for nearly fifteen years, on-and-off. he has an incredibly detailed personal history and a complex internal life when I portray him. But I still know that I make certain decisions because he is a fictional character used to bring me enjoyment, and not because that the character would necessarily do that. I can create post hoc rationalisations of his behaviour which satisfy the internal landscape, but that was never why that course of action was chosen.

I fear I have rambled on rather too much and I apologise. I guess it's just something I feel is important to me.

From:

becky-h.livejournal.com

Nice to meet you, too!

I think I understand what you're saying now - yes, absolutely. I don't lose site of the intent for the character or that they're a construct of someone's imagination. If you start confusing the character and the player there is a whole mess of trouble comes up and the least of it is bad gaming *G*.

I do agree that you have to keep those things apart, but in the process of playing I *still* have to assign motivation to the character. I can look ata character I write, or play, and say 'they are this way because these are MY constraints / this is what I want to do' but I still need to know what the reason THE CHARACTER has for that, as well.

Torchwood has done an amazing job of being very vague (to stay on topic, at all). This is good, in a way, because it allows a lot of discussing and readings of those things we see on screen. There are a *slew* of potential ways to take things - to give an Example that's right at the top of my head, Jack's monologue about the boyfriend who makes a grand entrance.

We know, for a fact, that the writers want Jack to be a very omnisexual, sexually free, play and loving guy. We know, for a fact, that he's babbling on about a boyfriend, and then the boyfriend being a twin, and then them both being acrobats.

It breaks down in the reading: Do you believe it's the literal truth as a whole or do you believe that some part of it's true and he's just pushing believability further and further to make Gwen talk, or was he lying to begin with?

There's a very valid argument for each of those, but your *reading* of Jack as a character is changed a bit with each one. Writing Jack, were I playing him in a scene, may not mean I ever have to examine that. But it also means that I might.

Which means I have to pick one, or a combination of two or all three, of those as most likely:

Jack babbling about his sex life to Gwen, Jack pushing buttons to get a response, or Jack lying outright.

If he's doing 1- is he doing it because he doesn't expect to be believed or because he doesn't care. If he *is* telling the truth, what does this tell us about Jack and the sort of relationships he has?. For 2- *Why* is he pushing her buttons there, exactly. For 3 the question becomes a matter of 'what circumstances does Jack lie, rather than remaining silent'.

ALl of that's overly simplistic, but it's all about telling me things that may be relevant in another scene in a game or a story.

It's not that I think Jack is real. It's that I want my readers or the person I'm RPing with to be able to *imagine him* and understand him at least enough to relate to him, and more importantly for him to remain consistant to *something*.

Every bit of canon that's added and every perception will change that, of course, and has to be worked into my view of him as a character who needs to stay true to the writers intent, but also true to what *I* see in my head as the 'recognizable core' of Jack.