From rm and mellacita.

1. The illness I live with is:
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

( cut for the other 29 questions )

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DAMN YOU KEL. DAMN YOU TO PIECES.

No, not really. *blows kisses to kel_reiley*

But it is her fault I just dropped too much money on this cape, especially after factoring in shipping and exchange rate (andtheextraheadbandithrewin), because I'd never heard of Modcloth before she linked to it.



My excuse? I live in Canada. I have to wear a coat for a good six or seven months out of the year. I need variety! (Plus, CAPE.)

I've never bought clothes offline online* before, but the reviews are good so... *crosses fingers*

*I have trouble with this phrase, because I really want to say "off online", but it gets shortened to "off line" and then the total opposite of what I really mean.

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The last two movies I've seen in theatres have both been really enjoyable. I'm not a particularly critical movie watcher, in that I generally can get into most any movie that isn't a Will Ferrel comedy (sorry B, and your epic love for Talladega Nights) without worrying too much about anything in particular, but these two stood out as more than just good times.

( District 9 spoilers, though nothing plotty, totally readable before watching )

( Julie & Julia, again not really spoilery except for one early scene )

Didn't take my Concerta (ADD meds) today. I find myself thinking on occasion "hey, I'm fine, I don't have ADD, this is all a load of crock!" and then I go off then for one day and end up at "oh, right. That's why."

( That said, here are three random photographs. )

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Not because I think most of you on my flist need it, but maybe you can link others to it. This is a great article addressing the myths about the Canadian health care system.

Debunking Canadian health care myths, in the Denver Post.

From it being financially impossible:

Myth: The Canadian system is significantly more expensive than that of the U.S.

Ten percent of Canada's GDP is spent on health care for 100 percent of the population. The U.S. spends 17 percent of its GDP but 15 percent of its population has no coverage whatsoever and millions of others have inadequate coverage. In essence, the U.S. system is considerably more expensive than Canada's. Part of the reason for this is uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S. still get sick and eventually seek care. People who cannot afford care wait until advanced stages of an illness to see a doctor and then do so through emergency rooms, which cost considerably more than primary care services.

to it being too bureaucratic:

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

to wait times:

Myth: There are long waits for care, which compromise access to care.

There are no waits for urgent or primary care in Canada. There are reasonable waits for most specialists' care, and much longer waits for elective surgery. Yes, there are those instances where a patient can wait up to a month for radiation therapy for breast cancer or prostate cancer, for example. However, the wait has nothing to do with money per se, but everything to do with the lack of radiation therapists. Despite such waits, however, it is noteworthy that Canada boasts lower incident and mortality rates than the U.S. for all cancers combined, according to the U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group and the Canadian Cancer Society. Moreover, fewer Canadians (11.3 percent) than Americans (14.4 percent) admit unmet health care needs.

All these ones in particular have been driving me *nuts* to read over and over again.

( cut because I'm dissing the US a little more than I meant to and I mean to subject my flist to without giving them the choice of clicking )

Sigh.

( sort of a pre-post on food and self-image )

Also, I think I'm going to try and have a "Spend Nothing Month" in September. It probably won't start until I'm back from camping (because sometimes when camping you just need to buy a spoon because you forgot all yours) but from Sept. 9th to Oct. 9th would work, assuming I've already bought my textbooks. Obviously, things like bathroom products and groceries are allowed, but not much else. Eating food out would only be okay if it was a social thing (and not "I was too lazy to pack a lunch"), but no more random coffees*, off-the-cuff iTunes downloads, clothes, nail polish & make-up... actually I can't think of anything else I randomly buy. But this will probably (a) be harder than I'm anticipating and (b) save me all that "where did that thirty dollars disappear to?" lost money.

There are a few things like this I'd like to do, to be more active about the social issues I think and read about, but most of them will probably wait until I move out of my parents house. Things like cutting out all processed foods, being aggressive in how much non-recyclable, non-composting waste I produce (and therefore purchase - like trying not to buy food products in non-recyclable containers, shunning blister packs as much as possible), being more aware of what impact the brands I purchase have on the world, using "natural" household cleaners rather than the chemical ones, trying not to use the car unless absolutely necessary, and so on and so forth. The boy and I are really interested in putting energy in those directions when we move back in together, and I think picking apart our consumer habits and lifestyle will be really interesting and worth the time. We were lazy in the past when neither of us had the spoons for it, but I think now we do.

*I might keep going to my local organic "more than" fair trade coffeeshop, because that's something I feel like supporting as a consumer.

B: Did you hear Les Paul died?
Me: Who? Oh, the drag queen?
B: *dies a little death*
Me: Oh wait, that's RuPaul. Nevermind then.
B: *never forgives me ever*

Introduction

I want to say right off the bat that this isn't personal for me. I'm not really in the Torchwood fandom anymore, I'm not much of a target, I don't post at torchwood_house (TWH) anymore, and I'm not even reading Torchwood fanfiction. My perspective through all of this has been one of emotional detachment and practical "oh, not this again". But my friends online have been targeted, and are now being played in a way intended to divide (no matter what the truth is), and I'm worried that somebody else will be as naive as we were and get hurt.

That's why I'm posting this. Not to slander somebody's virtual name, not because I've been hurt and feel the need to tell everyone, but because trolling sucks and it's easier to prevent if people talk openly about it. I've given people the benefit of the doubt before, I've erred on the side of secrecy, and though I don't regret that choice then, it's not the right one now. I know some people - inside and out of TWH - might think I'm writing this out of some sense of paranoia, or to gain attention, but neither of those are true: rather, I think gossip, filtered posts, and behind-the-scenes emails are only going to contribute to a loss of trust and real paranoia.

For the record, I don't have the approval or even the knowledge of most of the members of TWH before posting this. They are part of the story, but the story isn't really about them: it's about a troll and not a rec comm. My only claim in telling it is that I helped gather most of the information herein, so my perspective is perhaps a little broader and more complete than most. In the end, I'm writing this myself because I feel it's necessary, and I can't ask anybody else to do it for me.

This is an account of the facts as I know them. I'll try to present them without excessive commentary, but I will sum up why I draw the conclusions I do from all this, because to me, the worst part of all of this is that it can't be solved either way, except by the suspected party. Every piece of evidence on its own is unremarkable; together, the truth is pretty obvious. To see that whole picture, though, I'll have to go back to March. Oh, and my apologies up-front for gendered pronoun confusion!

( Part One: Athaari and TWH )

( Part Two: Godofstrife and TWH )

( Part Three: Going Forward )

About comments: they are currently screened. HOWEVER, I will be un-screening them as I see fit, so if you don't wish to make a comment public, send me a PM. I am happy to elaborate on any of this, but this post is not intended to be the beginning of a debate, simply a PSA.

I am not a dancer, but I grew up with dance. For my own part, I Scottish Country danced every Friday with my family, so I understand the sheer pleasure of movement to music on an instinctual level, though I am not talented at it.

Moreso, my sister danced growing up. She followed the city's top dance school's professional ballet track to the end of it at age sixteen. At her peak, she was taking fourteen separate classes a week - on top of regular high school at a school on the other side of the city. Not just ballet, of course, but modern, jazz, spanish, and surely others I am forgetting.

The result of this is for a non-dancer, I have seen a lot of dance. From her school's recitals with students at all skill levels, to ballet after ballet (I can't count how many versions of the Nutcracker I've seen! Let alone Giselle and Onegin and Cinderella and Swan Lake and Beauty and the Beast and Romeo and Juliet...) at the NAC, to modern performances by professionals and students in their school's full-time dance track, to world-class highland dancers (I grew up at the same church as the... 2006? world Highland Dance champion, and had the pleasure of seeing her dance many, many times), I've seen it.

Enough that I understand the medium on a deeper level than a casual viewer, enough to know when a dancer is incredibly technically skilled, and when a dancer has something more than just the technique and has the gift of dance. Enough to understand what kind of themes contemporary ballet and modern dance play with, and what those formats look like in the real world, outside of a reality show such as So You Think You Can Dance.

I don't know if it's the part of dance I don't know - ballroom dancing - that seem to be both Nigel and Mary's backgrounds that makes for the difference, but I am saddened and bewildered by the narrowness in the modern, jazz, and contemporary routines. Not necessarily in the choreographers - say what you will about Mia, she's for real. Sonya, I adore to pieces, and Stacy Tookey from SYTYCD Canada. No, it's the judges who reinforce it, week after week, who pound it into the viewers -

It's the heterosexuality of it all. Look, the real dance world? Not very heterosexual. Forget all the gay male dancers that Nigel seems to be afraid people will group him with, the dancing itself, not the classical tales but the new stuff, the contemporary and modern stuff, is often all about breaking gender boundaries. The last piece of dance I saw, by the Paris Opera Ballet, easily one of the best dance corps in the world, was a three part piece. The first was all women - strong, brutal, sharp, exhilarating. The second was men and women together, playing on classical partnerships but clearly subversive, and the third was a blatantly homo-erotic piece involving only men. It was physically powerful, yes, but it played with ideas of strength and masculinity and the marginalization of men who do not pick up on those roles. The men not only - gasp - touched each other intimately, there was even an extended scene where one man bathed the other. It was beautiful. It was uncomfortable. It was profound.

And that's not at all unusual in the dance world. But on SYTYCD? The men had better be masculine, and the women feminine, or Nigel will come down on you. The wonderful jazz piece by Sonya - clearly a fierce, alpha female - got criticized because Jeanine was in charge? Are you kidding me? And Evan was thrown around by her too much? Nigel's main problem with Evan seems to be that he's too soft for a leading man. His praise of Brandon, especially in the Paso Doble, was littered with machoisms and sexual overtones to a frankly disgusting degree.

And all the men-only choreography on the show, what is with that shit? The girls get something of a variety, and get to work together to create beautiful pieces of art. The boys, heaven forbid they touch unless it's to throw each other around, my goodness. That final dance between the top two boys had better be a battle, had better be about male posturing and machoism and sexual dominance. They'd better be trying to outdo each other. They'd better be "nasty" and dirty and sexualized men, or they weren't as good.

I love a lot of things about SYTYCD. I think bringing dance to a wider audience is a wonderful thing. But this? This is a parody of the real dance culture, sexist and dated and full of that "American" undertone that fills so much US media: fear of sexualities that are different, alternative, don't fit the perfect "male/female" duality.

It makes me so, so sad.

If you can't format your fic properly, I assume you can't write for shit and I will back-button out of your fic so fast my trackpad will get dented.

That's all.