Sorry if you've heard this before -- I only skimmed the comments -- but how on Earth are you getting nothing but "handjobs" and "shallow sexxings and innuendo" from the onscreen Jack/Ianto? Not just nothing but "unambiguously" nothing? Oh, God, look, there's eight month's worth of the tag "torchwood: fanalysis", and another couple of thousand comments for you to get through if you want to know where I'm getting that from. I'm aware they're giving us subtle and grownup J/I onscreen, what I am doing here is questioning the narrative choices that have been made with regards to this particular relationship. As you say, the Jack/Gwen is blatant and juvenile, in fact, pretty much everything in this show is pretty fucking blatant and juvenile and hammered into our heads like we're morons pretty much most of the time, except strangely enough, Jack/Ianto. Which is wonderfully subtle and underplayed. Now I love the way it's subtle and underplayed (and I think a lot of it's purely down to Gareth/John and how they work onscreen), but it's a strange way to choose to play this one, when compared with how other things are shown in the show.
The relationship between Jack and Ianto, which, as you say, started out really promising in the first few episodes (there seemed to be a romantic attachment from Jack and crucially for me Jack seemed to be letting Ianto call the shots), seemed to a lot of people, once it was established that they were fucking again, to boil down to just that: they were fucking again. I'm not a shipper, I don't care if they're fucking or married with puppies or if they break up, but what I do care about is the impression that's being put across onscreen and I think, and a lot of people would agree, that they've left an incredible amount of room for interpretation when it comes to Jack/Ianto, and for a show that isn't really very good at subtlety in any other respect, that comes across as a bit weird. To leave the primary relationship of the romantic lead of the show open to such wildly varying interpretations (there's plenty of room to interpret that they're in a meaningful monogamous relationship, sure, there's been plenty of hints in that direction, but a lot of people don't think Jack and Ianto are in any way exclusive and are just having a bit of bumfun on the side to pass the time) is a weird narrative choice to make, but given Jack's characterisation, as I say in my concluding paragraph, it's an understandable choice if you want to keep Jack's mystique intact and keep everything about him just a little bit vague. But if that's the reason you're keeping things subtle, don't go making them unsubtle in the blogs, because that defeats the object.
I'd love to see your face right now, honestly I would. If you want to know my basic beef with TW, I'd recommend my open letter and subsequent words of advice for RTD, which basically sum up what I feel is lacking in the writing and, primarily, the leadership department when it comes to TW. I ADORE TW, I don't think I've ever quite liked a show as much, but my God do I hate it. It makes me want to bite my own face off.
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Oh, God, look, there's eight month's worth of the tag "torchwood: fanalysis", and another couple of thousand comments for you to get through if you want to know where I'm getting that from. I'm aware they're giving us subtle and grownup J/I onscreen, what I am doing here is questioning the narrative choices that have been made with regards to this particular relationship. As you say, the Jack/Gwen is blatant and juvenile, in fact, pretty much everything in this show is pretty fucking blatant and juvenile and hammered into our heads like we're morons pretty much most of the time, except strangely enough, Jack/Ianto. Which is wonderfully subtle and underplayed. Now I love the way it's subtle and underplayed (and I think a lot of it's purely down to Gareth/John and how they work onscreen), but it's a strange way to choose to play this one, when compared with how other things are shown in the show.
The relationship between Jack and Ianto, which, as you say, started out really promising in the first few episodes (there seemed to be a romantic attachment from Jack and crucially for me Jack seemed to be letting Ianto call the shots), seemed to a lot of people, once it was established that they were fucking again, to boil down to just that: they were fucking again. I'm not a shipper, I don't care if they're fucking or married with puppies or if they break up, but what I do care about is the impression that's being put across onscreen and I think, and a lot of people would agree, that they've left an incredible amount of room for interpretation when it comes to Jack/Ianto, and for a show that isn't really very good at subtlety in any other respect, that comes across as a bit weird. To leave the primary relationship of the romantic lead of the show open to such wildly varying interpretations (there's plenty of room to interpret that they're in a meaningful monogamous relationship, sure, there's been plenty of hints in that direction, but a lot of people don't think Jack and Ianto are in any way exclusive and are just having a bit of bumfun on the side to pass the time) is a weird narrative choice to make, but given Jack's characterisation, as I say in my concluding paragraph, it's an understandable choice if you want to keep Jack's mystique intact and keep everything about him just a little bit vague. But if that's the reason you're keeping things subtle, don't go making them unsubtle in the blogs, because that defeats the object.
I'd love to see your face right now, honestly I would. If you want to know my basic beef with TW, I'd recommend my open letter and subsequent words of advice for RTD, which basically sum up what I feel is lacking in the writing and, primarily, the leadership department when it comes to TW. I ADORE TW, I don't think I've ever quite liked a show as much, but my God do I hate it. It makes me want to bite my own face off.