Pony Positive Day Two

[rabid1st]

Okay...I am out there trying to follow RTD logic...and let's see where it leads me.

RTD keeps pointing out that his Torchwood CoE choices are the product of "reality" and "drama" and he says that if you don't like the horrible things that happen, you should go read poetry. I am assuming he doesn't mean the poetry of Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
were toward eternity.

Yes...that's a cheery one with no whiff of dramatic reality to it at all. It is sure to get me over my Torchwood CoE funk.

But...what about children's poetry? Maybe a little Dr. Seuss? Hop on Pop! That's cheery! Or, children's television might be the place for happy endings, right? RTD said there was no way he could kill Rose because Doctor Who is about hope. And it's SciFi fantasy not drama (or tragedy as I like to call pointless death and doom). So...what's up with the despair and brain wiping, Rusty?

I'm thinking if RTD really isn't being defensively hypocritical in his assertion that Torchwood has to kill characters because death and pain is part of reality...then it stands to reason Doctor Who is the place for happy, sappy, pony-fied ever-after love story endings. Something with a "true love's kiss" and a wedding, would be about right, I'm thinking. Dr. Who is not about reality, is it? It's about last minute saves. Why so glum, Ten? Just make all of the bad happy again...think "What would Captain Jack do?" and do the opposite of that. No lonely running...no lost lives...just happy endings.

Comments

[salienne.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to puzzle out that comment.

Poetry? Really? Has he read any?

Emily Dickinson (that exact poem) is even in a previous Torchwood episode...

In terms of Doctor Who, I've always gotten the sense that RTD wants to do the full-on tragedy he does in Torchwood but can't. Though there's always the hope I could be wrong?

or Wislawa Szymborska

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Tortures

Nothing has changed.
The body is a reservoir of pain;
it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep;
it has thin skin and the blood is just beneath it;
it has a good supply of teeth and fingernails;
is bones can be broken; its joins can be stretched.
In tortures, all of this is considered.

Nothing has changed.
The body still trembles as it trembled before Rome was founded and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are just what they were, only the earth has shrunk
and whatever goes on sounds as if it's just a room away.

Nothing has changed.
Except there are more people,
and new offenses have sprung up beside the old ones--
real, make-believe, short-lived, and non-existent.
But the cry with which the body answers for them
was, is, and will be a cry of innocence
in keeping with the age-old scale and pitch.

Nothing has changed.
Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances.
The gesture of the hands shielding the head
has nonetheless remained the same.
The body writhes, jerks, and tugs,
falls to the ground when shoved, pulls up its knees,
bruises, swells, drools, and bleeds.

Nothing has changed.
Except the run of rivers,
the shapes of forests, shores, deserts, and glaciers.
The little soul roams among those landscapes,
disappears, returns, draws near, moves away,
evasive and a stranger to itself,
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,
whereas the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go.

LOL

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

We should send you to Comic Con, Caia! You could quote some death poetry at old Russell. It would be a fitting fanwank to run on him, too. I am feeling so uncharacteristically vindictive about this. I'm not even a fan of Ianto. I would have killed him, too. It really is that I have no hope of any television writer not losing his mind by S4.

Rae

Or Margaret Atwood

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

That's good, too.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Okay...now...this must become a thing...seriously.

It is making me giddy. And is far more telling than sending peanuts or whatever in fan protest.

Rae

Re: That's good, too.

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

A what sort of thing? A "Rusty, crack a goddamned book of poetry sometime!" thing?

Exactly that sort of thing

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

It would be far more interesting then signing a petition...fans could organize Dead Ianto Poetry Nights at the conventions. It would be educational for everyone...not just RTD.

Rae
all gleeful in her poetic anarchy, now! And you...you would be great at this!

Re: Exactly that sort of thing

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Um, except, I've watched about two episodes of Torchwood total. And have never (and probably will never) attend a con.

I have provided you a link...

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

So you can add a little poetry to the one I've already posted...do it just for the insult to poetry...to show what you show here...it's not all "Hop on Pop!"

Rae

Or Wendy Rose

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

When archaeologists excavated Santa Barbara Mission in
California, they discovered human bones in the adobe walls.

My pointed trowel
is the artist's brush
that will stroke and pry
uncover and ecpose
the old mission wall.
How excited I am
for like a dream
I wanted to count myself
among the ancient dead
as a faithful neophyte
resting there and in love
with the padres
and the Spanish hymns.

A feature juts out. Marrow
like lace, piece of a skull,
upturned cup, fingerbones
scattered like corn
and ribs interlaced
like cholla.
So many bones
mixed with the blood
from my own knuckles
that dig and tug
in the yellow dust.
How fragile
they have become
to float and fall
with my touch,
brittle white tips
shivering into mist.
How helpless I am
for the deeper I go
the more I find
crouching in white dust,
listening to the whistle
of longbones breaking
apart like memories.
My hands empty themselves
of old dreams
drain the future
into the moisture
of my boot prints.
Beneath the flags
of three nvaders
I the hungry scientist
sustaining myself
with bones of
men and women asleep in the wall
who survived in their own way
Spanish swords, Franciscans
and their rosary whips,
who died among th reeds
to wait, communion wafers
upon the ground, too holy
for the priests to find.

They built the mission with dead Indians.
They built the mission with dead Indians.
They built the mission with dead Indians.
They built the mission with dead Indians.

Bah, el jay

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

ate some of the formatting. And as a former English major, I am anal about such things.

Here is a link to the interview...

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

...I quoted part of TORTURES...but you might want to add a few stanzas of something, too. You are very good at this from or protest. :grin:

http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/07/backlash-shmacklash-thats-torchwood-creator-russell-t-davies-reaction-to-the-outcry-over-the-death-of-gareth-david-lloyds.html

Re: Here is a link to the interview...

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Uh, no. ...Which bit did you quote, I don't see it?

There is a delay...

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

of about 4 hours on the comments going up...but I quoted the Torture one by Wislawa Szymborska...so you should quote something else. But not the Adobe one...because it will take too much space, I think. There is a character limit...of 800 or so.

Go...fight for the poetic...against random snooty melodrama.

Re: There is a delay...

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Nah, fuck 'im.

Oh...come on...

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

They are insulting poetry. :Rabid speaks in a wheedling voice:

:snicker:

I just thought you might come up with more and better poems to quote.

[starcrossedgirl.livejournal.com]

I don't know - I honestly just think that RTD is too full of himself and his (quite frankly, often lacking) writing abilities, and has no ounce of respect for the fans. That whole "go watch supernatural business"? Just proves it to me once and for all.

The thing is...for me...

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

...this isn't even about Ianto. I didn't even cry over him. I probably would have killed him myself...but not in THIS storyline. If I was doing THIS storyline...knowing that I would have Jack kill Steven...knowing I'd just killed Tosh and Owen...well...I would have had Ianto turn his back on Jack at the end...getting over his "crush" in the face of the grim reality that they were dealing with as a couple in the whole episode.

I mean...first Ianto is questioning why he even has these feelings...then he's dealing with Jack's going on after him...then he's dealing with Jack being closed off...and both of them are denying they are a "couple"...it seems fitting that Ianto would have made an excellent voice for the audience if he had lived and rejected Jack...perhaps putting his arm around Alice and leading her away. Then, Gwen could ask Jack if he found Ianto...and learn that 1) he did and Ianto wouldn't even speak to him...or 2) that Ianto doesn't want to be found.

I mean...imagine the power of Ianto saying Jack was dead to him. Much more dramatic, I think...but then...I like poetry.

Re: The thing is...for me...

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

I concur this would have been more dramatic. And also ironic because Ianto's charge to Jack re:1965 was that he should have done something, saved the day, because that's the Jack he fell in love with. There really was no way to win in this situation.

BTW, just re-watched again this week. The solution was even more out of left field than it seemed the first time around. It didn't lessen the dramatic impact of Jack taken the only heroic option available to him and the consequences of that action. But yeah, it was really really REALLY out of nowhere and could have been handled so much better AND in the time alotted.

For me...it did lessen the impact

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because we had our own version of the writer's round table on my LJ. And people suggested that solution...and, so, I examined the text for the plausibility of it before we saw it.

Maybe I was seeing the rivets...as my friend Mary said, but I sort of expect an author who means to gut an audience...to be careful HOW he does it.

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

Here's another bit of hope: I can't recall if it was the Inside the Hub special or in one of the "sneak peaks at Planet of the Dead" thingers, but Moffat said something along the lines of "Doctor Who is essentially a fairytale"--and what do fairytales have? Happy Endings!

[phdelicious.livejournal.com]

what do fairytales have? Happy Endings!

Only the Disney version.

[wickedgillie.livejournal.com]

While that's historically true, the definition of "fairytale ending" has irrevocably changed because of Disney since fairytale is no longer synonymous with "cautionary tale." But point taken all the same. I suppose my comment was as bad as RTD implying poetry is somehow less dramatic than telly.

[phdelicious.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that was meant more as a reminder than a criticism of anyone who wants to take the comment hopefully (I really wish I could). Clearly you're right - the popular understanding of fairytale is something with a "happily ever after". Unfortunately TPTB seem to enjoy fucking with their fans and the fairytale thing just seems like something that's too easy to back track on for me to not be wary of.

[shaela]

Actually, a lot of traditional fairytales have happy endings (e.g., Tam Lin, The Black Bull of Norroway, etc.). One of my problems with the past four seasons of Doctor Who is that RTD started out telling a fairytale and then took a left turn into melodrama. (I don’t have any more hope than you do that we’ll get a proper, “fairytale” ending, though.)

[keswindhover.livejournal.com]

I don't want to be depressed by poetry OR Torchwood. Luckily Torchwood failed to depress me due to being crap. The Torture poem, however, is very depressing indeed, as well as good - and Rusty should be duly humbled by it.

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

It's one of my favorites. Wislawa Szymborska makes me wish I read Polish.

LOL

[susanb03.livejournal.com]

If wishes were horses, eh?

[gwendolynflight.livejournal.com]

Poetry lacks drama? Ah, can I just say, Milton's Paradise Lost? Eliot's The Hollow Men? Or, ooh, more modern fare, anything by Carolyn Forche? No? Nothing? ::sigh::

Can I play too?

[soophelia.livejournal.com]

Adrienne Rich
For the Dead

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight