All Songs End And All Songs Last Forever
Mar. 4th, 2010 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bodlonBeing not so much a recap of the Character Deaths panel so much as a meditation on the issue that is inclusive of the experience of being there, written by a man drugged to the gills but so bereft of patience on the topic that he is writing it under the influence.
Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.
Kathy Nightingale: What's good about sad?
Sally Sparrow: It's happy for deep people.
- Doctor Who 03x10, "Blink"
I've been in Torchwood fandom since the show began airing in the UK1. It's how I spoiled myself for the end of Doctor Who S2 (which at that point was airing on Sci-Fi), and I've been more than casually invested in the thing. Torchwood has ruined me for so many other programs because it's got this magical combination of science fiction, interpersonal drama, and big action. In terms of theme and content it's always been this sort of sweet spot for me against which so many things seem to fall short.
Part of that is, I think, the Doctor Who in it. Part of that is that it manages to be its own strange and miraculous thing.
But oh, Torchwood has never been a kind thing. We open death and horror, and from that point we are always surrounded with it. The world in Torchwood is the world next door where things are altogether weirder and more horrible than we can imagine. It's a reality that has to exist in counterpoint with a man who can't even carry his own scars or be properly heroic because of his immortality. It's a world that goes camp because it has to laugh because otherwise the alternative is to weep.
That's the show I've been watching. It's the show I've always been watching. It's the show I would watch again if we get another series of it, American or British, because this is why I love it. That sense of carrying on in the face of the impossible is that same indomitable human spirit that infuses and transcends the individual. It's what the Tenth Doctor has been on about for the last four years. And it's beautiful.
When "Exit Wounds"2 aired, I was gutted. I'd been watching the show from the start, and I'd spent that day watching the other 12 S2 episodes as a lead-in to the finale. Not only did Owen and Toshiko feel familiar to me, like friends, but their lives felt immediate in that moment. Watching them fall when they were each just beginning a new chapter in their lives was awful. On a purely emotional level, I didn't want to lose them. I didn't want them to go. I still miss them.
And yet, it never occurred to me that the thing to do at that point was to rail at the BBC, or Torchwood's creative team. In as much as I experienced (and still do experience) sincere sorrow at the deaths of these characters, and for all the snarky commentary certain people in my life made about the truly illogical design of the Turnmill plant, I still found Toshiko and Owen's deaths profoundly effective and affecting. They went out like Big Damn Heroes, they died so that others might live, and they were damned amazing.
From a Doylist3 perspective, they went out at a point when their narratives could hold our interest. Killing a character when that character goes stale isn't really much more than formally sweeping them away. Killing a character when that character is still vital? It's a gut punch. It feels like something genuine has been lost. We feel the survivors' loss more acutely and can relate to them in ways we can't otherwise.
Which brings us back into the Watsonian. Could their deaths have been more momentous? More wonderful? Did they still have life in them and potential? Was it wildly unfair that Owen's demise came down to bad design and an ugly technical glitch? Sure. But how many people really get a chance to finish up before they die? Who dies wholly without potential? How many of us are really ready to go? That's a tiny, tiny number.
One of my first and best friends died when I was in 7th grade. She killed herself with a bottle of pills because she was hurting. I got called out of algebra and sent home. She was mere months away from a driver's license, and only a little more 3 years away from graduating high school. Amy had tremendous potential and I miss her terribly. She had so many stories. But she died. She's gone. This is life. We go on. Same thing when a character dies. Really, at the end of the day there are only two things about a realistic character death that are different from actual death:
- There is someone on the other end of the work when characters die4.
- There is always a reason for the death5.
Oddly, it's often been the Doylist perspective that gives me the necessary distance to accept the death of a character I love dearly. I think this is because it gives my intellect a toe-hold in the grieving process while I try and handle the Watsonian angle and proceed in tandem with the grieving process alongside the characters. When Wash died in Serenity, it helped to hear Joss Whedon and Alan Tudyk's commentary on why the death was ultimately good and necessary for the story to hit as hard as it did during my moment of weepy flail.
Could I argue that his death is flawed or unwarranted? I suppose, though if I wanted to belabor that point, it would be Book's death I'd challenge. Wash -- like Toshiko and Owen -- goes out at a moment where he's done an amazing thing. It's horrible and visceral to see him touch his potential within moments of being killed. He was a leaf on the wind goddamn it. I swear, my eyes are getting moist just writing this. But I don't get the sense that I would still care as much as I do five years later if Whedon hadn't killed him.
When we demand of our texts and creatives that all deaths must be meaningful, we're asking writers to do precisely the opposite of what they should be doing, which is telling us a true thing. Unless I've completely misunderstood the world around me, almost none of us will die taking a bullet for our One True Love. Almost none of will be that lone survivor who presses on hard enough to punch the button and saves the planet. I've yet to stand next to a death bed where somebody gets that last, weird Shakespearean monologue.
People die of heart attacks, of cancer, in car accidents. In 100 years most of us will be lucky if anybody knows a damn thing about who we were.
So I understand wanting our characters to have better than what we get. It's human self-defense. Sometimes we need that fantasy to make our own mortality bearable. We want that thread of hope that it will mean something when it's all over.
Which, incidentally, brings me back to Torchwood.
With few exceptions, death in Torchwood is a grim thing. In "Everything Changes," the very first episode, a dead man called John Tucker tells us (thanks to Suzie's glove) that there is nothing on the other side. Death in Torchwood is a profound darkness where if there is anything moving, there is something terrible afoot, and that's true in both S1 and S2. It's not until "Random Shoes" that the possibility of something more is ever raised, and it's only really in In The Shadows, one of the late audios, that we see even the tiniest glimmer of hope that something good might come to even a few of us.
Ianto Jones is the one who gives us that glimmer. He rescues Jack from Hell.
I spent an awful lot of time at Gallifrey One talking about Children of Earth. About half of that was with people who have made their peace with Ianto's death. A good chunk of it was with John Fay, who wrote Day Two and Day Four. And some of it was with people who most certainly haven't made peace, either from a Doylist or a Watsonian position, and are still angry at the men on the other side of the text for killing Ianto. After nearly a year, that anger is still there. And it's still profound.
Every time I have a discussion like this, I feel like I'm being stopped from grieving. I feel like I'm being told that my acceptance (Doylist in that I can understand it in terms of narrative, structure, and craft; Watsonian in that I can see the thought process that plays out between Jack and Ianto and why they make the choices they do) is somehow wrong. That I have mourned incorrectly, that it is Not Okay for me to be both sad and willing to continue. This is particularly angry-making when the homophobia issue comes into play because I think from both perspectives that the outcome in Children of Earth -- being Ianto's death -- has to occur. If not Day Four, then eventually. It's a necessary thing.
When I talk about the ways I've stepped back from certain elements of fandom in the last year, I lay a lot of that at the feet of writing original fiction. And really, I am busier now. But I'm also tired of being placed in a position to defend my own grieving process. I resent that there's a whole faction of people pouring money and resources in an organized way into an echo chamber that makes people like me traitors. It's exhausting to feel like I'm being driven off because I'm willing to do at the end of S3 what I did at the end of S2 and look forward. I hate that the predicament that I'm viewing as really fertile from both Watsonian and Doylist angles is being pooh-pooed by people who seek to legitimize the hijacking of a fandom with charitable work.
Which is, unambiguously, good charitable work. Children in Need? Wonderful. But I'm deeply uncomfortable with applauding the way that money was raised because I was on Twitter when angry fans drove James Moran away, or when somebody wants to tell me that it's okay to harrass people for months because of their personal disappointment. I object to being told that art is a democracy, or that writers are not allowed to make people sad their stories, or that one reading of a text is the only reading of a text.
That makes me angry. And it makes me tired. And it also makes me scared when I go to a panel like the one I attended at Gally and see a man cast insults and actually rise to his feet and move like he's going to launch himself onto the panelists because he is disappointed, or because he didn't like the story6. It's exhausting to me to share a space with people who wear that damned 'dead is dead in the whoniverse' shirt like a battle flag.
I want my fandom back. And I can't wait for series four. And you can't stop me.
You can't stop these kids from dancing and why would you want to,
Especially when you are already getting yours?
'Cause if your mind don't move and if your knees don't bend,
Well don't start blaming the kids again.
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
Let it go, This too shall pass.
- Ok Go, "This Too Shall Pass"
---
1 I prefer the term "Buccaneer American."
2 "Exit Wounds" is the final episode of the second full series of Torchwood in which Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper are killed.
3 Explanation of Doylist v. Watsonian here.
4 Depending on your religious and spiritual beliefs you may feel that this to be the case with real death. However, that someone isn't somebody you can ring up on a telephone or write a letter to.
5 These reasons are, admittedly, sometimes ridiculous. See Also: Harry Potter book 7.
6 Clarification: Outbursty McShoutypants wasn't entirely clear about what all his issues were in that panel, but the one thing everyone remembers him specifically being upset about was Tara's death in Buffy. However, the point I'm making here is intended to be a general one since the post is inclusive overall. I don't mean to imply that Outbursty McShoutypants is a part of SIJ, but I do mean to highlight his bad fan behavior as something which is destructive in any fandom as it damages discourse in general.
Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.
Kathy Nightingale: What's good about sad?
Sally Sparrow: It's happy for deep people.
- Doctor Who 03x10, "Blink"
I've been in Torchwood fandom since the show began airing in the UK1. It's how I spoiled myself for the end of Doctor Who S2 (which at that point was airing on Sci-Fi), and I've been more than casually invested in the thing. Torchwood has ruined me for so many other programs because it's got this magical combination of science fiction, interpersonal drama, and big action. In terms of theme and content it's always been this sort of sweet spot for me against which so many things seem to fall short.
Part of that is, I think, the Doctor Who in it. Part of that is that it manages to be its own strange and miraculous thing.
But oh, Torchwood has never been a kind thing. We open death and horror, and from that point we are always surrounded with it. The world in Torchwood is the world next door where things are altogether weirder and more horrible than we can imagine. It's a reality that has to exist in counterpoint with a man who can't even carry his own scars or be properly heroic because of his immortality. It's a world that goes camp because it has to laugh because otherwise the alternative is to weep.
That's the show I've been watching. It's the show I've always been watching. It's the show I would watch again if we get another series of it, American or British, because this is why I love it. That sense of carrying on in the face of the impossible is that same indomitable human spirit that infuses and transcends the individual. It's what the Tenth Doctor has been on about for the last four years. And it's beautiful.
When "Exit Wounds"2 aired, I was gutted. I'd been watching the show from the start, and I'd spent that day watching the other 12 S2 episodes as a lead-in to the finale. Not only did Owen and Toshiko feel familiar to me, like friends, but their lives felt immediate in that moment. Watching them fall when they were each just beginning a new chapter in their lives was awful. On a purely emotional level, I didn't want to lose them. I didn't want them to go. I still miss them.
And yet, it never occurred to me that the thing to do at that point was to rail at the BBC, or Torchwood's creative team. In as much as I experienced (and still do experience) sincere sorrow at the deaths of these characters, and for all the snarky commentary certain people in my life made about the truly illogical design of the Turnmill plant, I still found Toshiko and Owen's deaths profoundly effective and affecting. They went out like Big Damn Heroes, they died so that others might live, and they were damned amazing.
From a Doylist3 perspective, they went out at a point when their narratives could hold our interest. Killing a character when that character goes stale isn't really much more than formally sweeping them away. Killing a character when that character is still vital? It's a gut punch. It feels like something genuine has been lost. We feel the survivors' loss more acutely and can relate to them in ways we can't otherwise.
Which brings us back into the Watsonian. Could their deaths have been more momentous? More wonderful? Did they still have life in them and potential? Was it wildly unfair that Owen's demise came down to bad design and an ugly technical glitch? Sure. But how many people really get a chance to finish up before they die? Who dies wholly without potential? How many of us are really ready to go? That's a tiny, tiny number.
One of my first and best friends died when I was in 7th grade. She killed herself with a bottle of pills because she was hurting. I got called out of algebra and sent home. She was mere months away from a driver's license, and only a little more 3 years away from graduating high school. Amy had tremendous potential and I miss her terribly. She had so many stories. But she died. She's gone. This is life. We go on. Same thing when a character dies. Really, at the end of the day there are only two things about a realistic character death that are different from actual death:
- There is someone on the other end of the work when characters die4.
- There is always a reason for the death5.
Oddly, it's often been the Doylist perspective that gives me the necessary distance to accept the death of a character I love dearly. I think this is because it gives my intellect a toe-hold in the grieving process while I try and handle the Watsonian angle and proceed in tandem with the grieving process alongside the characters. When Wash died in Serenity, it helped to hear Joss Whedon and Alan Tudyk's commentary on why the death was ultimately good and necessary for the story to hit as hard as it did during my moment of weepy flail.
Could I argue that his death is flawed or unwarranted? I suppose, though if I wanted to belabor that point, it would be Book's death I'd challenge. Wash -- like Toshiko and Owen -- goes out at a moment where he's done an amazing thing. It's horrible and visceral to see him touch his potential within moments of being killed. He was a leaf on the wind goddamn it. I swear, my eyes are getting moist just writing this. But I don't get the sense that I would still care as much as I do five years later if Whedon hadn't killed him.
When we demand of our texts and creatives that all deaths must be meaningful, we're asking writers to do precisely the opposite of what they should be doing, which is telling us a true thing. Unless I've completely misunderstood the world around me, almost none of us will die taking a bullet for our One True Love. Almost none of will be that lone survivor who presses on hard enough to punch the button and saves the planet. I've yet to stand next to a death bed where somebody gets that last, weird Shakespearean monologue.
People die of heart attacks, of cancer, in car accidents. In 100 years most of us will be lucky if anybody knows a damn thing about who we were.
So I understand wanting our characters to have better than what we get. It's human self-defense. Sometimes we need that fantasy to make our own mortality bearable. We want that thread of hope that it will mean something when it's all over.
Which, incidentally, brings me back to Torchwood.
With few exceptions, death in Torchwood is a grim thing. In "Everything Changes," the very first episode, a dead man called John Tucker tells us (thanks to Suzie's glove) that there is nothing on the other side. Death in Torchwood is a profound darkness where if there is anything moving, there is something terrible afoot, and that's true in both S1 and S2. It's not until "Random Shoes" that the possibility of something more is ever raised, and it's only really in In The Shadows, one of the late audios, that we see even the tiniest glimmer of hope that something good might come to even a few of us.
Ianto Jones is the one who gives us that glimmer. He rescues Jack from Hell.
I spent an awful lot of time at Gallifrey One talking about Children of Earth. About half of that was with people who have made their peace with Ianto's death. A good chunk of it was with John Fay, who wrote Day Two and Day Four. And some of it was with people who most certainly haven't made peace, either from a Doylist or a Watsonian position, and are still angry at the men on the other side of the text for killing Ianto. After nearly a year, that anger is still there. And it's still profound.
Every time I have a discussion like this, I feel like I'm being stopped from grieving. I feel like I'm being told that my acceptance (Doylist in that I can understand it in terms of narrative, structure, and craft; Watsonian in that I can see the thought process that plays out between Jack and Ianto and why they make the choices they do) is somehow wrong. That I have mourned incorrectly, that it is Not Okay for me to be both sad and willing to continue. This is particularly angry-making when the homophobia issue comes into play because I think from both perspectives that the outcome in Children of Earth -- being Ianto's death -- has to occur. If not Day Four, then eventually. It's a necessary thing.
When I talk about the ways I've stepped back from certain elements of fandom in the last year, I lay a lot of that at the feet of writing original fiction. And really, I am busier now. But I'm also tired of being placed in a position to defend my own grieving process. I resent that there's a whole faction of people pouring money and resources in an organized way into an echo chamber that makes people like me traitors. It's exhausting to feel like I'm being driven off because I'm willing to do at the end of S3 what I did at the end of S2 and look forward. I hate that the predicament that I'm viewing as really fertile from both Watsonian and Doylist angles is being pooh-pooed by people who seek to legitimize the hijacking of a fandom with charitable work.
Which is, unambiguously, good charitable work. Children in Need? Wonderful. But I'm deeply uncomfortable with applauding the way that money was raised because I was on Twitter when angry fans drove James Moran away, or when somebody wants to tell me that it's okay to harrass people for months because of their personal disappointment. I object to being told that art is a democracy, or that writers are not allowed to make people sad their stories, or that one reading of a text is the only reading of a text.
That makes me angry. And it makes me tired. And it also makes me scared when I go to a panel like the one I attended at Gally and see a man cast insults and actually rise to his feet and move like he's going to launch himself onto the panelists because he is disappointed, or because he didn't like the story6. It's exhausting to me to share a space with people who wear that damned 'dead is dead in the whoniverse' shirt like a battle flag.
I want my fandom back. And I can't wait for series four. And you can't stop me.
You can't stop these kids from dancing and why would you want to,
Especially when you are already getting yours?
'Cause if your mind don't move and if your knees don't bend,
Well don't start blaming the kids again.
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
When the morning comes,
Let it go, This too shall pass.
- Ok Go, "This Too Shall Pass"
---
1 I prefer the term "Buccaneer American."
2 "Exit Wounds" is the final episode of the second full series of Torchwood in which Toshiko Sato and Owen Harper are killed.
3 Explanation of Doylist v. Watsonian here.
4 Depending on your religious and spiritual beliefs you may feel that this to be the case with real death. However, that someone isn't somebody you can ring up on a telephone or write a letter to.
5 These reasons are, admittedly, sometimes ridiculous. See Also: Harry Potter book 7.
6 Clarification: Outbursty McShoutypants wasn't entirely clear about what all his issues were in that panel, but the one thing everyone remembers him specifically being upset about was Tara's death in Buffy. However, the point I'm making here is intended to be a general one since the post is inclusive overall. I don't mean to imply that Outbursty McShoutypants is a part of SIJ, but I do mean to highlight his bad fan behavior as something which is destructive in any fandom as it damages discourse in general.
