torchwood liveblogging and such

Right I'm going to liveblog my way through torchwood cos I has no one to watch it with...
(I've also added in random asides clarifying points in this charming italic font ;) )

I am so excited, I cannot tell you how excited...

Huh the whole first section revealed by trailers; not good.
(I must admit that I could have avoided being spoiled were it not for my temptation to see lots of the james marsters John barrowman kissing that comes up later)

Although the fact that this whole first section is all kinds and flavours of awesome = love
the blowfish sports car is delight
(I particularly liked the little old welsh lady. Spot on to have her swearing at them!)

love that Gwen cares about speeding while chasing the fish because of running of kids; gwen is brill
(and its what i always think when I see them racing around cardiff, and so in keeping with her previous character development and the boy that was run over and died in Season 1's Random Shoes)

owen is some how magically sexier now, being in charge suits him, plus has he lost weight. love the music btw, very seventies cop show esque. the whole thing as a grittier feel than the last time
although blowfish's monologue is a little predictable and ott. Recognise the voice of blowfish man as well
(this is because he's always playing monsters on doctor who it seems. His name is Paul Kasey )

the face on tt= (team torchwood) when they notice its jack= great love
and jacks as they cope with out him; jealous and proud. oooooo gwen is pissed.... ianto jack shippers will be happy; that was a flirty look

james masters walking through like some sort of god!!!! boooyakasha! sex on a f-ing stick. randomly violent sex on stick. yum yum. I have a thing for peninsular war era uniforms ever since sharpe, james in one is exciting... and pick the ones he wants in the bar is hilarious. he's funny too!
(I may have gotten a little carried away in fangrrrl squee-ness around now.)

geek-gasm star wars reference!!!!
(I heart random appropriate referencing to other cultural tropes, and this one was bang on)

and they're time agent friends. tt are not happy about being left behind and their gonna follow- I think this might be a bad plan

oooo jacks sad, he's sexy sad. james masters is so flirty. Is it wrong that this is an ginormous turn on. captain jack and spike making out all sexy then fighting with guns and blur and it's crossing the same line as that buffy episode where her and spike fuck the house down....
lol! the more fun when he's around thing.... ooooooo james marsters character is called john hart sexy; is that a thing for time agents then? being called captain j~ h~? drinking together awesome.

ooooo and john's in rehab, murder rehab.

tender almost kiss. nice. gorgeously filmed.

partners for 5 years!! arguing over which was the wife. he is cute tosh! well noticed. oooo dick jokes lol
(there's nothing wrong with appreciating cock innuendo, especially when there's someone involved whose happy to admit that his is the smaller, if he'd been huffy about it I wouldn't have liked it)

ooooo he's come for the powers of good! (supposedly- don't believe that) ooo he likes tosh. cute. awww john's hurt that jack don't want him. and johns right tosh is the cute brainy one :)
(one of the things I like about torchwood is that it plays off these tropes of the cold distancing guy, the sex crazed cad the cute geek girl etc but the characters do not become the cliche; they are derived from the trope not part of the trope if that makes sense)

poor cgi for the entrance shot. disappointing. god james marsters has a nice arse.
oooooo jack gwen moment. he wants to tell her it's a moment all right. blimey jack's flirting. shit Gwen got engaged!!!! jack's jealous. subtly but still. lol stands to reason that Gwen's proposal would be a joke

oooooo jack does want her. Goddamn it I don't want her and jack I want her and Owen!

john is sexy and even more flirty than jack; unbelievable. ha no kisses!! that's gonna get broken
I've missed wales...

john in love? it's a lie. he shot her. thats my bet. john killed her.

Gwen broke a rule. oh dear. silly gwen. she's jumpy. I was jumpy. ha now he's playing the seeds of doubt card. well played captain john.

I knew the kissing rule was gonna get broken. yep he's paralysed her with lip gloss; awesome. oh and she has 2 hours not to die. excellent.

ha it's all about jack; john wants him back..... unsuprising
nice cut away trick.

owen and tosh, not a combo I woulda picked. ha! welsh word! please don't flirt with owen tosh, it'll only embarrass you. owen saying he needs a proper woman. oh my god he's flirting back? holy crap no. blimey he nutted her. owen does like her! christ last season he might have let him kill her.
(I really should have seen tosh and owen coming; owen needs a woman to feel validated and tosh is lonely/desperate)

shit did john shoot him?
ah.... ianto and jack that's more like it. ianto's not playing. he won't flirt with him. jack asks him on a date!!!!!!!!! shit yeah!!!!!! ianto will go on a date with him!!!!! blimey blimey blimey. ianto's sexy and flustered and that was bloody fantastic!!!!!!
(This was the point when I started dancing around in fangrrrl joy)

so excited. jack and ianto finally for real. they're gonna have lovely dates. torchwood is so good.
oooo open lift danger!
calling ianto eye candy = brilliant!
james giving ianto a chance to save them. ooooo john is a bit of a nihilist isn't he. sex and jokes to cover the essential nothing ness of existence
5194 jack= rear of the year! wow

tt are pretty but stupid. awwww he really has done it because he wants jack back.
bloody hell! we know jack can live but john doesn't. looks like murder rehab didn't take. no wonder he wants jack back ;)

ianto as the hero figure :) just where he belongs. ah the swagger, traditional james master swagger.

tosh finds gwen. cute. I really really miss wales. cardiff looks nice at dawn.
hmmmm john putting together his pieces. seems he know the fish boy. ah fish boy has a piece of the bomb thing. awww tt are back ready to stop him. and johns face when jacks not dead. brilliant.

awww jack comes back for beauty. I knew john killed her :) ha he's gotta try the orgy card. cute. o no. john's gonna die. and he's taken gwen hostage. plus - tt are cold they were happy for him to die.
(This for me is the main difference between doctor who and tt- tt are way way more ruthless and human and base about this sort of thing than the doctor. the doctor would have either felt guilty or been making some moral pronouncement if he'd been willing to let john die. tt are just living in the moment not the consequence)

they're doing something exciting with dna.... lol! the poodle fancying = priceless. the theory on 51st century sexuality is expanding to encompass beastiality....

shit gwen does love him

awww and they're pagan in the future

awww the final kiss is the most believable and cute.

ooooooooo whose grey. a kid? jacks kid? that's my official guess

final shot is over dramatix but excellently so

the previews are tres tres exciting. and alot of sex. an awful lot of sex.. plus they've got a doctor and Martha jones and another jm visit by the looks/ sound of it.

I am now in a state of barely contained excitement....
I think I have to go and have a lie down...


In summation; new torchwood rocks

all at sea

This was a hard week.

I've been quite stupidly ridiculously lucky and since I was 17 have been pretty much exclusively in the company of pro-queer, pro-feminist clever liberal types. And while during that time I've had to deal with people who were not any of those things I've done it through the lens of having regular affirming acceptance of my ideals, my beliefs, my sexuality. Which I always knew was actually pretty unusual, but it's one thing to know and it's another thing to actually live it, as I am now finding out.

I am glad in a funny stupid sort of way; it's a great way of hardening my feminist resolve, of reminding me of my privilege as an articulate intelligent person. And yet it's too hard.

I've never been an adult queer in an unwelcome environment. Avoidance of unwelcoming environments has dictated some very important choices in my life so being forced to be here isn't wonderful. And I just found out my first school placement (this course is 50% taught at uni, 50% practical placement) is in a Roman Catholic school which, according to its website, thinks that drawing pictures of dead relatives and saints is an appropriate activity for 8 year olds! Pagan queer feminist teacher in a rough inner city catholic school... yeah I'm nervous.

I just feel isolated at the moment, in a way I haven't done since I was... yeah 17. There are so many ways in which my attitudes towards things my coursemates take for granted are so different as to be alien to them( ; ie. they say:little girls are naturally sweeter and like dolls and boys have more energy I say: mostly behaviour which is induced by society, AND I don't see the difference in energy just in ways people let them express that. they say: I don't care how many civil liberties the government encroaches it if might save one life. I say: arag!! well no actually I respond with coherent if extremely simple arguments against their crazy right wing conservativeness, but inside I am saying ARAG!!

coming out is a process. I always knew that, but it feels like I keep having to come out as so many different things at once. Like when someone said "so you're a feminist to me" yesterday like I'd confessed I enjoyed dismembering puppies in my spare time, or when I talked about an ex-girlfriend during lunch one day and the whole group perceptibly moved away. Or indeed pretty much any time I express any opinion about anything. And I know this is most likely what most people go through, and I probably sound whiny and naive but I really hadn't expected it would be like this; so overwhelming and isolating.


And that's my life at the moment, which combined with a whole load of other shit is making me feel really really crap... I'm trying to keep it together, to remember why I'm here, why I'm doing this, who really matters. But urgh. Ad next weekend I have to go play nice at my parents 25 wedding anniversary, which is actually the absolute last thing I need to do right now.

But even though the people I really love are a very long way away right now they are still trying to be there for me. I spent 2 hours yesterday on the phone to a friend who hates the phone. It's just hard to remember how loved and supported you are in the moment you're feeling the hate.

Any advice on how to deal with dense conservatives who believe whole hearted in the patriarchy and are so hetero normal as to not even understand what that means will be more than appreciated.

Crystals

i've got a big review of an amazing gig that I went to on tuesday night to give you. But I've been busy so I haven't finished it. So instead we're going to talk about crystals. I'm going around the world, as you, my faithful non-existent readership know, and as a pagan I've been thinking about what supplies of the magical* type I should bring along. I'm toying with the idea of brining my tarot cards, because well, I'm travelling round the world alone and there's nothing like telling peoples fortunes to make friends, right? But I want to bring along some protection. And that, to me, means crystals.

I've used crystals since before I ever considered myself pagan. Gemstones and plain old stone stones, for various purposes. Aged 11 I brought my first two crystals on a family holiday in Lyme Regis; a tigers eye and an obsidian. I needed grounding and induitivly picked some of the best stones for grounding. The moral of that sotry; buy what ever stone you want to buy on the day. Don't question it.

This weekend I went to this local healing fair and knew that I wanted to buy some yellow jasper. Unfortunatly there wasn't any there. So on Tuesday, after getting my Hep A, B, Typhoid and Rabies jabs (I still feel nauseous :( ) I headed here, a local restuarant and crystal shop (crazy combination I know, they also sell clothes!). They didn't have any yellow jasper either. However I did buy a load of other tiny stones, with the intent of making my self a sort of medicine bag type thing.

I picked up some Pyrite, Amethyst, Aventurine, Bloodstone and Lapis Lazuli. Last night I popped down to my spitual home and picked up some tiny little pebbles to go in it as well.
So far so good. Now I just have to cleanse them all, make something small and unobtrusive to put them in and find a small enough piece of obsidian to add to the haul.
Oh and some Yellow jasper, because I still want some! And a load of tiny quatrz shards as offerings for the various places I come across that deserve them. Why does everything end up being more work than you think?

I am sooooo busy organising stuff for my round the world, and my lovely jaunt to Norway next week, and my two days in an infant school as part of ongoing post-grad plans, and driving to Cardiff to purchase essentials for my round the world. Oh and working. And of course writting. I'm getting worried I won't be ready for June the 4th.


*yes that's write I don't go all 17th century and write it iwth a k. ha

Small steps

Today I went and did a ritual at my spiritual home. Fairly normal stuff for a pagan you might think. Well yes. But also no.
You see my spiritual home is a beautiful beach and not somewhere that I'd usually go to at night. I was attacked once, long ago, and even though I'm perfectly comfortable holding my own walking through any sort of major city (I lived in central London and some of its less salubrious edges for 3 years) I get nervous sometimes on my own in the wilds. Especially near the sea. I'm not complaining; everyone has their demons and mine are quieter than most. But I'm going around the world in just a few weeks. I shall be alone. I can't afford to be nervous there. So I knew I had to get over this one.
What better way than going to the place where I feel safest and most grounded? So I went, and did the ritual and in the gloaming my time on that beach was moving and fulfilling and I felt peaceful and calm. I even discovered a ready made stone circle in the sand right where I wanted to work. This was the right decision.
Of course I did get nervous getting back to the car on my way home and practically ran across the car park and nigh on dived in the car. But small steps right? And as small steps go, this is a pretty big one.