beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I needed to fill up my head, so I started with the setting. Standing on a beach at night, only the white on the waves visible, stars above and tall cliffs behind. Tide going out slowly, waiting for the waves to leave the sand. One character hands another a cup of hot soup; two more report in to her. They're waiting for the right time, for the call, for the battle to start. One final defence...

... and then I thought, why defence? Why battles, for that matter. I'm standing on the edge of the sea. Everywhere connects to everywhere from here. Why is it I'm thinking of defences? Why is the dream of my own ground?

( Read more... ) there's weird twisty symbolism in there. Set stories on a physical border or a border between ways of living and you've got defense and attack, preserve and destroy, your team and theirs, before you even describe the people in those sides. A battle on a beach has a different symbolism just from the setting than it would have on an inner city street, or a suburban cul de sac, or in a park, or a railway station, or on the outer ring road. Different again around a stone circle or out in a forest, even slightly different in an old oak or a new conifer wood. Who would be defending which ground? And would it line up with any particular rhetoric? Country vs City, Old vs New, Our Land vs Wider World? Could I accidentally end up making a racist argument just by the backdrop to a fantasy battle?

Reckon I could.

The imaginary has its geography already.

( Read more... )

1) The more I read about the Suzie-Owen-Tosh montage in 1-01 and the more people call what Tosh does innocuous and innocent, the more I want to argue it.
Because she's actually the one who gets called by Gwen *most* in the first ep. All those databases she shouldn't have access to, all that use of CCTV. ( Read more... )
Tosh does the routine invasion and violation of people's privacy, for a living.
And nobody calls that wrong?

... that, right there, is deeply interesting.



2) Unrelated, I just private posted a looooong rant that started out being about... something completely random, then detoured via Jack and porn as per usual, then turned into something that can be summed up as "How do people do it? The being people thing? Or the doing other people? Because from the oops wrong planet perspective this thing called sex is both somewhat fascinating and vastly vastly mysterious and how *weird* is that?"
Only there was more funny and quite a lot of bitter and a very long rant about four in the morning as a unique convergence of time, people, and alcohol.



So *then* the two thoughts collided and turned into a vague thought about how Toshiko has all the data in the world, all the internet and a whole lot more, and yet couldn't reach out to the person at the next desk well enough to get a perpetually horny man to so much as snog her. And then to know what other people were thinking she needed technical assistance.

... I'm feeling that bitter kind of empathy here. And also envy. Because she at least one more chance of knowing at that level than anyone in this world ever gets.


... the more I think about it, the more I think that Tosh does in fact have a personality but it went invisible the same way CCTV cameras do, because it's all just so normal we don't think about it. She's the computer geek who loves talking about texts but can't find anyone to talk to. Hello to the familiar.

Only her favourite texts are not shared by millions, they're classified so secret she can get fired just for geeking about them. No fandom. No connection with, for random instance, Eugene. Was she even in that ep? But really, Eugene had more of a connection to a social network with a shared preoccupation, even though it wasn't shown. He knew people who were into the alien stuff too. Probably only on computer and not very well, but, my point is, Torchwood-the-company doesn't function as a fandom. Cult, yes, fandom, no. No shared appreciation. It's more like one of those message boards where you can't help but wonder why they're still watching if they hate it so much. Which, okay, this place can sound like some days, when I get my rant on. But I'm only paying attention because of the aspects that I love... which are those I find useful and valuable, in one model of what audiences do with texts. Torchwood-the-company has a version of useful and valuable based on defence and money. None of that social/poetry stuff. Like they think it's all technical manuals. Programmers, not Trek.

Huh.




It's seven in the morning and I spent the last two hours typing and I should probably attempt sleep at some point. Because I haven't. Since I woke up yesterday lunchtime, to get a parcel.

... which is a useful disclaimer I shall leave visible.



(Like Toshiko, Ianto's 'sin' was trying to protect the alien from Torchwood. Which is very reminiscent of Jack. Except that Jack has more knowledge and picked the right alien. Sort of. From a perspective given by a quarter century of watching the Doctor.)
(So really we're back to ignorance-is-poison, by way of attachment. Only the usual poison at Torchwood is hate, for anything Other. And they create ignorance on purpose. Huh.)