Children of Earth: My verdict
Jul. 13th, 2009 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tencrushThis will probably be an incoherent list of thoughts about CoE, just to get it out of my system so I can move on.
OBSERVATION THE FIRST:
IF I WERE COMPLETELY CONVINCED THAT THERE IS NO SEASON FOUR, I'D PROBABLY BE A LOT HAPPIER ABOUT SEASON THREE. A lot of people praising it into the heavens are calling it a swansong and saying their teary goodbyes to Torchwood, and I think a lot of the people who aren't doing that, aren't doing that because they think they've been set up for GWEN COOPER: EARTH DEFENDER. Look, the thing is, I, like many others, am a cynical person. And I don't hate Gwen, and I don't think she interferes with Jack/Ianto (which I never really shipped anyway, I think Ianto could do better), I thought she was kickarse and good in series three and I didn't think she was all that bad in series two either. But there was a story Russell wanted to tell. In order to tell it, Ianto Jones had to die. He had to die because having a man by his side who had such an unwavering faith in Jack's goodness would have rendered Jack incapable of making the sacrifice he had to make. He didn't have to die for any other reason, there was no plot-related reason as to why Ianto was in that room, without protection, there was one, authorial, reason Ianto was in that room, and that is because Russell wanted Ianto to die. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a rather cheap and nasty thing called refrigeration. A death that has no reason apart from that of spurring the hero into action. Chick, or Ianto, gets killed by alien virus, tortured hero finally stops being angsty and tortured, takes his finger out of his arse and does what needs to be done. Completely pointless, except for the part where it was pivotal and crucial to the total destruction of the character of Captain Jack Harkness. So, yeah. In a way, I understand that, a really cheap way to get to the ultimate goal. It's just that, the more you think about that, the more difficult it becomes to understand why Russell T. Davies felt the character of Captain Jack Harkness needed to be demolished so totally and utterly. I can understand wanting to tell this reasonably well-crafted, undoubtedly critically acclaimed, dark, depressing tale. But why butcher THESE characters to do it?
A funny thing happened in Day Five. (Apart from the funny funny joke about dead Ianto being GAY, lol.) The story reached a point where I no langer cared about any of it, and even as I was watching, I started to step out of the tale (which had been ENGROSSING, from day one up until Frobisher shot himself in day five) and wonder what the hell was going on. Where was this going? Why is Russell going here? What is he trying to tell us? Why is he destroying this character? I literally fell out of the story about 15 minutes before the end, which is why I posted that LOLOLOL reaction about Jack flying away, because I just didn't understand what the hell was going on anymore. Ianto's dead. Jack is broken. Gwen has lost faith in humanity's goodness. Not enough to not want to put a child on this earth, but only by the narrowest of margins. Why? And, even while I was watching that cynical part of my brain said Oh. I get it now. There IS a series four and it's that Rose Tyler: Earth Defender thing that Russell's always wanted to make, but with Gwen Cooper, and in order to be allowed to make it, he had to A)get the ratings B)at Moffat's request, sever the ties to Who by getting rid of Jack and C)get rid of teh ghey. Now, of course, that's not true. Right? But that's what my brain was thinking even as I was still watching the story play out. I ceased being able to be affected by the story and became obsessed with the actions behind it and the question of WHY the story was being told. And apart from that cynical reasoning, I can't really think of any other reason. Maybe there's another reason in there somewhere. I don't know. All I know is, before the story had ended, my brain was already saying FAIL FAIL FAIL.
IT'S GUY LOVE BETWEEN TWO GUYS!!!
Man... that was good, wasn't it? Remember how Russell touted this relationship between Jack and Ianto around as being groundbreaking and boundary pushing and wow, we're trying to give people a whole new groovy and relaxed outlook on sexuality? Lol. That was funny, wasn't it? How many SHINY NEW VIEWERS did series three get, guys? People who had never seen this show before? What did we teach these FEW MILLION people? Ianto WAS A GHEY. For those of you who didn't get it from the "bender" and "gayboy" jibes (which meant "We love you anyways you daft git", and were thoroughly well-written, absolutely necessary in terms of character and the establishing of how much Ianto's family loves him), we've upped you a "QUEER!" and a "WAS HE GAY?" for good measure. We've rewritten him as a standard-by-the-book-dramatic-gay, he's unsure of himself, he comes out, he gets insulted, he's suddenly doing all those things the gheys in soap operas do (Man, I remember a time when Ianto said "and I don't care" What the fuck happened to that guy?). And then we kill him, obviously, because the gay must die. It's a lovely, lovely message for those shiny new viewers of yours, Russell, and it's one I hope you get called on again and again and again until the day you die. Fuckwit.
There are several aspects to this "love story" that are disturbing to an uncomforatble degree, one of which is better articulated by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xtricks here, read the whole thing, and it's that "men don't say they love someone - not unless one or the other is dying," and, as commenter lawsontl says in the comments of that post "The "love story" we were hyped up on by Euros and RTD, it was bait and switch. Jack/Ianto getting their last chance at intimacy blocked in a joking scene about beans is not a love story. Being shown that they still have trouble communicating with each other, right to the very second Ianto is dying in Jack's arms - that's not a love story... it takes Ianto dying for Jack to realize how deep his feelings really are. That is brutal; for him, for Ianto, and for fans of the show. Moreover, I think it's blatantly wrong. Jack's over 200 years old... He may be a bit of a cad, he may choose to avoid emotional entanglements for good reasons, but he's got to know feelings when he has them." Yeah. That. Like I said, my brain's been slow to process this pile of fail, so I'm just gonna quote other people atcha. Sorry.
If that weren't bad enough, then there's the retcon of Ianto Jones. Debenhams and broken legs and everything it implies. Daddy issues. Hero worship. Those cynics who railed on Ianto for being ALL ABOUT JACK were right all along. Thanks, Russell. You couldn't even let us cling onto the idea that maybe Ianto was his own man. You had to twist the knife there. Which brings me to...
THE DEATH AND DEATH OF IANTO JONES OR LOL WHY ARE WE SO UPSET?
Ianto Jones died of authorial intent. That's not a pleasant thing for any fan of Ianto Jones to have to experience, but his death was, given the direction his tale was headed in, something of an inevitability. And after the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, it was something fandom could have probably accepted and lived with, in spite of its pointlessness. And we were upset, yes. Why? Well, the thing about Ianto Jones was that we were never really told that much about him. We never really knew very much about Ianto Jones. We speculated and discussed what made him tick and what was going on behind those suits and that coffee fetish of his, we guessed at his family life and his romantic past, we wrote fic and meta and, in my case, made elaborate picspams about the size of his metaphorical cock. Ianto Jones, given the amount and size of the holes in his canonical character, became, for those that loved him, a guy we invented in our heads. That's what fandom, hardcore fandom, does. We fill in the gaps. We make the character our own, and the opportunity had never been so readily available as it was in Ianto Jones, l33t manwhorespy of mystery. We knew next to nothing, so we made him up. And that's why it hit us so hard when he died the first time. It was like someone had gone into our brain and found the Ianto file we'd so meticulously been piecing together for two years, taken it out, ripped up all the little bits of paper and scattered them around the floor. That's two years' work, dude, what did you have to go and do that for? That hurts, it really does, and that's why Ianto fans were hurting so bad. But... we'd have got over it. Eventually. But then a funny thing happened to Ianto Jones in Day Five. He died again. And that was just... cruel. Death by Debenhams. WE NEVER KNEW IANTO JONES. He was a liar, he was ashamed (ashamed of that wonderful, wonderful family you've just made us care so much about), everything you knew about him was wrong. Why does that make people so mad? Because it's gratuitous. It's as gratuitous as bringing up his sexual orientation AGAIN, even AFTER his death. And again, it's one of those things that makes you step out of the tale and think WHY? Why do this to our memory of this guy? Because as far as the plot goes, as far as the story goes, there's no reason for it. Let the guy rest in peace. But no, the author decides to give us one more snippet that upsets our whole view of the man and all we can do, we, the people who put all that work in, is take that as the final FUCK YOU to our Ianto file. All that stuff in those scraps of paper, all that shit we were hoping to maybe tape back together and make legible again? Pissed on. Not your file to make, dudes. My toy. Always has been. It's no wonder some people have gone batshit angry towards RTD and the team. Which brings me to...
OH LOL THE HILARIOUS INTARWEBS N00BNESS OF JAMES MORAN
Yeah, okay, don't be batshit towards James Moran, guys, because that's not cool, but on the other hand, seriously, James Moran? Don't flounce of the internets when you can't take the heat. It's pathetic. There's a mousie on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
who_anon who sums up the James Moran situation better than I ever could (this post has mostly turned into a collection of links to people who sum things up better than I can, sorry.) here:
Moran was more than happy to ride the Janto fandom bandwagon to boost his own profile wrt Torchwood. The Captain's Blog on the BBCA website, for example, was by his own assertion intended to flesh out the relationship far beyond what was happening onscreen. He did it in an intensely shippy way, esp. in having Jack express a romantic and emotional interest in Ianto, more than a sexual one.
And the fans lapped it up. And he's been gleefully lapping up their appreciation ever since, right down to playing along with the pseudo-RPS malarkey Twitterfen were making up, to decide which of him and Joe Lidster was the bigger Janto fan.
And he was a direct active member of the creative team that just shat on that happy relationship.
It doesn't matter what lofty authorial intent/serving higher plot demands BS he wants to spout now: Moran helped that fanbase to choose their pet puppy, joined in with them fussing and petting it, and then helped the nice men take it outside and wring its neck in the backyard while the fans all watched.
I may not agree with the way some of them are expressing their anger and upset, but I sure as fuck understand why so many of them feel like Moran personally betrayed them in this.
So, yeah, that. Whoever you are, anon, word. So what does James Moran do? He flounces off the internet. He says ne NEVER tried to mislead ANYONE, EVER. Now, see, the thing is, James, you were part of that team. This would be the same creative team that brought us these promotional pictures
with the bigMFgun that never was. And if you, James Moran, are now completely refusing to even slightly hold your hands up and say "Yeah, okay, we may have done a tiny bit of a bait and switch on you there," then you're lying. You, who wrote COCKBLOCKED BY BEANS, a scene in which our hero, Jack Harkness, can't even bring himself to JUST BE FORTHRIGHT, and say to Rhys "Hey, dude, could you leave me and Ianto alone for a bit? We've been through hell and we could do with a cuddle. I'm sure you understand." He can't even do that for this man he allegedly cares about, yet you have the gall to call this a "love story." And no, no author deserves to be personally attacked for what they've written, of course not. But you fuck with people's heads and expectations, you're going to get some flak. And if you can't deal with that flak, then maybe you shouldn't be in the business of trying to make an audience care about the characters you create.
That's it. That's all I have to say about Children of Earth. I've reached the point where I don't want to think about it or write about it ever again. I tried to find some beauty in it and I tried to find some hope, I tried to find an uplifting theme, something about Ianto having come from that 10%, but every time I thought about it, I just ended up back at pointless death, hopelessness and despair. And while I understand that that's a tale that needs telling sometimes, I didn't want my big gay cracky pterodactyl show to be used to tell it. I'm upset that it was, and I think I have every right to be upset. If you enjoyed it, good for you, I'm glad somebody did. I didn't, and I reject it. It never happened, dudes. That's my final word on the subject.
OBSERVATION THE FIRST:
IF I WERE COMPLETELY CONVINCED THAT THERE IS NO SEASON FOUR, I'D PROBABLY BE A LOT HAPPIER ABOUT SEASON THREE. A lot of people praising it into the heavens are calling it a swansong and saying their teary goodbyes to Torchwood, and I think a lot of the people who aren't doing that, aren't doing that because they think they've been set up for GWEN COOPER: EARTH DEFENDER. Look, the thing is, I, like many others, am a cynical person. And I don't hate Gwen, and I don't think she interferes with Jack/Ianto (which I never really shipped anyway, I think Ianto could do better), I thought she was kickarse and good in series three and I didn't think she was all that bad in series two either. But there was a story Russell wanted to tell. In order to tell it, Ianto Jones had to die. He had to die because having a man by his side who had such an unwavering faith in Jack's goodness would have rendered Jack incapable of making the sacrifice he had to make. He didn't have to die for any other reason, there was no plot-related reason as to why Ianto was in that room, without protection, there was one, authorial, reason Ianto was in that room, and that is because Russell wanted Ianto to die. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a rather cheap and nasty thing called refrigeration. A death that has no reason apart from that of spurring the hero into action. Chick, or Ianto, gets killed by alien virus, tortured hero finally stops being angsty and tortured, takes his finger out of his arse and does what needs to be done. Completely pointless, except for the part where it was pivotal and crucial to the total destruction of the character of Captain Jack Harkness. So, yeah. In a way, I understand that, a really cheap way to get to the ultimate goal. It's just that, the more you think about that, the more difficult it becomes to understand why Russell T. Davies felt the character of Captain Jack Harkness needed to be demolished so totally and utterly. I can understand wanting to tell this reasonably well-crafted, undoubtedly critically acclaimed, dark, depressing tale. But why butcher THESE characters to do it?
A funny thing happened in Day Five. (Apart from the funny funny joke about dead Ianto being GAY, lol.) The story reached a point where I no langer cared about any of it, and even as I was watching, I started to step out of the tale (which had been ENGROSSING, from day one up until Frobisher shot himself in day five) and wonder what the hell was going on. Where was this going? Why is Russell going here? What is he trying to tell us? Why is he destroying this character? I literally fell out of the story about 15 minutes before the end, which is why I posted that LOLOLOL reaction about Jack flying away, because I just didn't understand what the hell was going on anymore. Ianto's dead. Jack is broken. Gwen has lost faith in humanity's goodness. Not enough to not want to put a child on this earth, but only by the narrowest of margins. Why? And, even while I was watching that cynical part of my brain said Oh. I get it now. There IS a series four and it's that Rose Tyler: Earth Defender thing that Russell's always wanted to make, but with Gwen Cooper, and in order to be allowed to make it, he had to A)get the ratings B)at Moffat's request, sever the ties to Who by getting rid of Jack and C)get rid of teh ghey. Now, of course, that's not true. Right? But that's what my brain was thinking even as I was still watching the story play out. I ceased being able to be affected by the story and became obsessed with the actions behind it and the question of WHY the story was being told. And apart from that cynical reasoning, I can't really think of any other reason. Maybe there's another reason in there somewhere. I don't know. All I know is, before the story had ended, my brain was already saying FAIL FAIL FAIL.
IT'S GUY LOVE BETWEEN TWO GUYS!!!
Man... that was good, wasn't it? Remember how Russell touted this relationship between Jack and Ianto around as being groundbreaking and boundary pushing and wow, we're trying to give people a whole new groovy and relaxed outlook on sexuality? Lol. That was funny, wasn't it? How many SHINY NEW VIEWERS did series three get, guys? People who had never seen this show before? What did we teach these FEW MILLION people? Ianto WAS A GHEY. For those of you who didn't get it from the "bender" and "gayboy" jibes (which meant "We love you anyways you daft git", and were thoroughly well-written, absolutely necessary in terms of character and the establishing of how much Ianto's family loves him), we've upped you a "QUEER!" and a "WAS HE GAY?" for good measure. We've rewritten him as a standard-by-the-book-dramatic-gay, he's unsure of himself, he comes out, he gets insulted, he's suddenly doing all those things the gheys in soap operas do (Man, I remember a time when Ianto said "and I don't care" What the fuck happened to that guy?). And then we kill him, obviously, because the gay must die. It's a lovely, lovely message for those shiny new viewers of yours, Russell, and it's one I hope you get called on again and again and again until the day you die. Fuckwit.
There are several aspects to this "love story" that are disturbing to an uncomforatble degree, one of which is better articulated by
xtricks here, read the whole thing, and it's that "men don't say they love someone - not unless one or the other is dying," and, as commenter lawsontl says in the comments of that post "The "love story" we were hyped up on by Euros and RTD, it was bait and switch. Jack/Ianto getting their last chance at intimacy blocked in a joking scene about beans is not a love story. Being shown that they still have trouble communicating with each other, right to the very second Ianto is dying in Jack's arms - that's not a love story... it takes Ianto dying for Jack to realize how deep his feelings really are. That is brutal; for him, for Ianto, and for fans of the show. Moreover, I think it's blatantly wrong. Jack's over 200 years old... He may be a bit of a cad, he may choose to avoid emotional entanglements for good reasons, but he's got to know feelings when he has them." Yeah. That. Like I said, my brain's been slow to process this pile of fail, so I'm just gonna quote other people atcha. Sorry.If that weren't bad enough, then there's the retcon of Ianto Jones. Debenhams and broken legs and everything it implies. Daddy issues. Hero worship. Those cynics who railed on Ianto for being ALL ABOUT JACK were right all along. Thanks, Russell. You couldn't even let us cling onto the idea that maybe Ianto was his own man. You had to twist the knife there. Which brings me to...
THE DEATH AND DEATH OF IANTO JONES OR LOL WHY ARE WE SO UPSET?
Ianto Jones died of authorial intent. That's not a pleasant thing for any fan of Ianto Jones to have to experience, but his death was, given the direction his tale was headed in, something of an inevitability. And after the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, it was something fandom could have probably accepted and lived with, in spite of its pointlessness. And we were upset, yes. Why? Well, the thing about Ianto Jones was that we were never really told that much about him. We never really knew very much about Ianto Jones. We speculated and discussed what made him tick and what was going on behind those suits and that coffee fetish of his, we guessed at his family life and his romantic past, we wrote fic and meta and, in my case, made elaborate picspams about the size of his metaphorical cock. Ianto Jones, given the amount and size of the holes in his canonical character, became, for those that loved him, a guy we invented in our heads. That's what fandom, hardcore fandom, does. We fill in the gaps. We make the character our own, and the opportunity had never been so readily available as it was in Ianto Jones, l33t manwhorespy of mystery. We knew next to nothing, so we made him up. And that's why it hit us so hard when he died the first time. It was like someone had gone into our brain and found the Ianto file we'd so meticulously been piecing together for two years, taken it out, ripped up all the little bits of paper and scattered them around the floor. That's two years' work, dude, what did you have to go and do that for? That hurts, it really does, and that's why Ianto fans were hurting so bad. But... we'd have got over it. Eventually. But then a funny thing happened to Ianto Jones in Day Five. He died again. And that was just... cruel. Death by Debenhams. WE NEVER KNEW IANTO JONES. He was a liar, he was ashamed (ashamed of that wonderful, wonderful family you've just made us care so much about), everything you knew about him was wrong. Why does that make people so mad? Because it's gratuitous. It's as gratuitous as bringing up his sexual orientation AGAIN, even AFTER his death. And again, it's one of those things that makes you step out of the tale and think WHY? Why do this to our memory of this guy? Because as far as the plot goes, as far as the story goes, there's no reason for it. Let the guy rest in peace. But no, the author decides to give us one more snippet that upsets our whole view of the man and all we can do, we, the people who put all that work in, is take that as the final FUCK YOU to our Ianto file. All that stuff in those scraps of paper, all that shit we were hoping to maybe tape back together and make legible again? Pissed on. Not your file to make, dudes. My toy. Always has been. It's no wonder some people have gone batshit angry towards RTD and the team. Which brings me to...
OH LOL THE HILARIOUS INTARWEBS N00BNESS OF JAMES MORAN
Yeah, okay, don't be batshit towards James Moran, guys, because that's not cool, but on the other hand, seriously, James Moran? Don't flounce of the internets when you can't take the heat. It's pathetic. There's a mousie on
who_anon who sums up the James Moran situation better than I ever could (this post has mostly turned into a collection of links to people who sum things up better than I can, sorry.) here:Moran was more than happy to ride the Janto fandom bandwagon to boost his own profile wrt Torchwood. The Captain's Blog on the BBCA website, for example, was by his own assertion intended to flesh out the relationship far beyond what was happening onscreen. He did it in an intensely shippy way, esp. in having Jack express a romantic and emotional interest in Ianto, more than a sexual one.
And the fans lapped it up. And he's been gleefully lapping up their appreciation ever since, right down to playing along with the pseudo-RPS malarkey Twitterfen were making up, to decide which of him and Joe Lidster was the bigger Janto fan.
And he was a direct active member of the creative team that just shat on that happy relationship.
It doesn't matter what lofty authorial intent/serving higher plot demands BS he wants to spout now: Moran helped that fanbase to choose their pet puppy, joined in with them fussing and petting it, and then helped the nice men take it outside and wring its neck in the backyard while the fans all watched.
I may not agree with the way some of them are expressing their anger and upset, but I sure as fuck understand why so many of them feel like Moran personally betrayed them in this.
So, yeah, that. Whoever you are, anon, word. So what does James Moran do? He flounces off the internet. He says ne NEVER tried to mislead ANYONE, EVER. Now, see, the thing is, James, you were part of that team. This would be the same creative team that brought us these promotional pictures
with the bigMFgun that never was. And if you, James Moran, are now completely refusing to even slightly hold your hands up and say "Yeah, okay, we may have done a tiny bit of a bait and switch on you there," then you're lying. You, who wrote COCKBLOCKED BY BEANS, a scene in which our hero, Jack Harkness, can't even bring himself to JUST BE FORTHRIGHT, and say to Rhys "Hey, dude, could you leave me and Ianto alone for a bit? We've been through hell and we could do with a cuddle. I'm sure you understand." He can't even do that for this man he allegedly cares about, yet you have the gall to call this a "love story." And no, no author deserves to be personally attacked for what they've written, of course not. But you fuck with people's heads and expectations, you're going to get some flak. And if you can't deal with that flak, then maybe you shouldn't be in the business of trying to make an audience care about the characters you create.
That's it. That's all I have to say about Children of Earth. I've reached the point where I don't want to think about it or write about it ever again. I tried to find some beauty in it and I tried to find some hope, I tried to find an uplifting theme, something about Ianto having come from that 10%, but every time I thought about it, I just ended up back at pointless death, hopelessness and despair. And while I understand that that's a tale that needs telling sometimes, I didn't want my big gay cracky pterodactyl show to be used to tell it. I'm upset that it was, and I think I have every right to be upset. If you enjoyed it, good for you, I'm glad somebody did. I didn't, and I reject it. It never happened, dudes. That's my final word on the subject.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 04:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, if you look as this article the only one mentioned as starring in series 3 is Eve.
But then a funny thing happened to Ianto Jones in Day Five. He died again. And that was just... cruel. Death by Debenhams. WE NEVER KNEW IANTO JONES. He was a liar, he was ashamed (ashamed of that wonderful, wonderful family you've just made us care so much about), everything you knew about him was wrong. Why does that make people so mad? Because it's gratuitous.
It was gratuitous, wasn't it. Not only did they kill him but they killed who we thought he was.
(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-07-13 05:26 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 04:58 pm (UTC)Amen!
Date: 2009-07-13 05:02 pm (UTC)I did go over to RTD's web site and say much the same as I've already posted here. From reading the comments there, I'd say its running about 50/50 for/against the show. Please put your comments there - I know it won't make any difference, but I also think that RTD should feel the love.
I will stay with the fan fiction, cause that's where Ianto will always live for me. On the LJ Torchwood/slash site there was a plea to authors to keep writing Janto. And I support this. As I said, I don't care if its cancn (through series 2) or AU, Ninja, Swooshy, or Rentboy Ianto, keep writing. As as a reader, not a writer, I'll keep reading. Cause I sure won't be reading the books or any other official TW stuff.
Re: Amen!
From:Re: Amen!
From:IT'S GUY LOVE BETWEEN TWO GUYS!!
Date: 2009-07-13 05:14 pm (UTC)"I don't even think what we got in CoE was exactly a happy affirmation for the most part either. Several moments of Ianto looking wistful or unhappy or worried about Jack, several moments of Jack either ignoring him or shutting down tacky conversations about couples and how long they could be together anyway, one hug, one desperate about-to-die kiss, a bit of cockblocking, one outright declaration, one implied declaration... and a kiss for the corpse.
It's probably very entitled and ridiculous of me to be less than enthralled by such a ringing endorsement of the relationship. Especially when you never get to see Gwen and Rhys being warmly affectionate and supportive in every ep over the full five hours and ending by riding off into the sunset tog... oh, wait. "
http://community.livejournal.com/who_anon/6299.html?thread=28773531#t28773531
Which largely sums up my problems with the way the relationship has been written.
Re: IT'S GUY LOVE BETWEEN TWO GUYS!!
From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2009-07-13 07:35 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:47 pm (UTC)I'm sorry to disagree COE was brilliant....
Date: 2009-07-13 05:50 pm (UTC)Ianto had to die because he was Jack's lover, not because he was gay. If Jack's squeeze had been a woman, she would have died as well.
Jack had to be free to be the Tragic Hero, roaming the universe lonely and fucked-up.
Losing Ianto and Steven was his punishment for the children in 1965. He had to suffer for that.
What did some of the fans want? Thirteen episodes of 'Jack and Ianto go to the Supermarket, and Have a Lovely Fluffy Conversation about Eternal Love'?
It would have been bollocks.
Re: I'm sorry to disagree COE was brilliant....
From:Re: I'm sorry to disagree COE was brilliant....
From:Re: I'm sorry to disagree COE was brilliant....
From:Re: I'm sorry to disagree COE was brilliant....
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2010-01-02 04:04 am (UTC) - Expandno subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:51 pm (UTC)I agree with all of you 100% about this -- the cynical and cold-hearted way in which fans were manipulated about the whole show is just jaw-dropping. The only good thing (for me) is that I have discovered a lot of wonderful people and wonderful writers through LJ.
RTD is a homophobe? Don't make me laugh.
Date: 2009-07-13 05:55 pm (UTC)I hope it's just fans lashing out because they loved TW and Ianto, but when they stop to think about it they will realise they are wrong.
RTD is out and proud. Since he re-created Doctor Who there has been an enormous amount of homophobia flung at him. Just have a look at some of the personal remarks made about him, and his sexuality on the sci-fi forums. It'll make your toes curl.
I was watching the original UK Queer as Folk in 99 when it first aired. Rimming and anal sex in the first ten minutes - wow it was ground-breaking for terrestial tv. RTD took a lot of flack then from the real homophobes and also from a certain percentage who said his characters should be role models for the gay community, instead of real, messed-up people.
Mostly straight fangirls telling a gay man about homphobia? Please! Like I said have a trawl around the internet, and you'll see how much homphobia RTD gets against himself and his shows. Don't even start psychobabbling on "internalised homophobia", or I'll throw "passive aggressive fangirl" back at you.
IANTO DID NOT DIE BECAUSE HE WAS GAY. HE DIED BECAUSE HE WAS JACK'S LOVER. If Jack had been with a woman/Gwen she would have died too. Jack is the universe-roaming anti-hero. He could never be tied down - it just couldn't work.
It was not because BBC1 is homphobic, and they're trying to sell S4 to a mainstream crowd - as I've seen some posters claim. There may never be a S4. They didn't know if COE was going to be a success before it was aired. So the last memory the mainstream public have is that Jack was devastated when his male lover died.
The idea that it's "Bury your Gays" for a tv show. Really? Well, RTD is an equal opportunities character killer. Clem also died in Day Four. RTD treats his gay and straight characters equally. Gay characters are not angels or role models, just people. And in the TW world people die.
I loved Ianto, and Janto, but if this was to be the last series of TW I'm glad we got the moving death scene.
Ianto was going to die someday. If S4 had never been made it would have felt unfinished. It would have been worse (IMO) if the COE had ended with Jack leaving Ianto - which Ianto feared, along with Jack forgetting him - but I think he knew by the end that Jack really loved him.
And Jack did love him.
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From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 06:35 pm (UTC)CoE really was the cruelest "fuck you" to people who cared about a character you can come up with. Lots of shout outs to the Ianto fans telling them in no uncertain terms who created him and who would finally break him.
Why? I really have no idea.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 07:49 pm (UTC)And THANK YOU for pointing out the bigMFgun thang. Gunnus pornus interruptus!
For a show that prided itself on being "gay/straight/bi/omni - doesn't matter, you people and your quaint labels!" - they spent an awful lot of airtime talking about being gay this season.
And, um...you can be homosexual and still be homophobic. It's called self-hatred, and gays are not exempt from it any more than straights are.
(no subject)
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Date: 2009-07-13 07:50 pm (UTC)And I miss Ianto, my Ianto, so very much and this pain is not going to go away anytime soon.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 08:43 pm (UTC)First, let me be clear that I don't condone personal insults or physical threats.
But I do get a sense here (as in other situations where writers and producers travel out on the intarwebs to interact with fen) that there's a bit of silliness in Moran's posturing. He's a professional and he made his choices, which included engaging the fans invested in Janto while he was well aware of the story to come. So either he was willing to play the game or he was naive enough to believe that the fanbase would be okay with another tragic love story ending (without having properly even gotten the love story on screen; frankly, I wasn't even sure they spent the nights together until I listened to the last radio play!).
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 09:06 pm (UTC)What irritates me is that all of a sudden TPTB realised that if Ianto was going, they had to generate some interest. So they throw out lines like the broken leg card and the debenhams dad... only to completely waste what could have been utterly killer storylines. I was looking forward to seeing lots more backstory in this season, as it was promised, only to have it rushed through.
Had they kept to a 13 episode season, and introduced the storylines then - even having 13 episodes telling the one story, a little bit like 24, but uh 13.... (I digress), they could have covered it and it wouldn't feel so cheap.
Well that was rambly and not particularly concise. I'm going to glare at random members of the public until I feel better.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 09:36 pm (UTC)As for James Moran, well that is just stupid. Surely he knows better than this? There are mentally unstable people on the internet, why cosy up to them all in the first place? That is why we have professional boundaries, let them think that they are your friends, and it will come back to bite you. He could have just ignored the mental ones, had their posts deleted or whatever, but that pompous business about being a professional writer and the defensiveness about the death. Well you know, I didn't need a rocket science degree to figure out that you were a writer for God's sake. I think there is no excuse for aggression and threats, but then they will be people with some issues about gripping reality, that behaviour isn't normal, not ever.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 10:35 pm (UTC)I also might decide COE never happened. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to deal with it. It seemed like such a gratuitous torture-fest for the characters. Jack's back where he started when he met the Doctor, only worse. He better not be his old self when he appears in DW.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 10:35 pm (UTC)You're amazing! <3
Orson Scott Card
Date: 2009-07-13 11:41 pm (UTC)Years ago I used to read Orson Scott Card. And it was really the first time that sympathetic, mostly 3 dimensional gay characters were introduced (that was a long time ago, they may now have flattened to 2D upon rereading). After several of the novels, I realized that the sympathetically gay guy pretty much died brutally and horribly. I'm sorry I can't remember any details - it was at least twenty years ago. ;->
So, um, homage to Orson Scott Card? Probably not. But new to the world of science fiction? Not so much.
Although I hadn't read/heard that S4 is already written, I did read that RTD has left the country. I know there are amayzing opportunities waiting him in the repressed, homophobic US, but I can't help but think he does everything for a reason.
Just sayin'.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 11:44 pm (UTC)this
THIS
i've been trying to say this
actually i think i did pretty much everywhere
but yeah
THIS
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 12:17 am (UTC)Ianto died in Jack's arms. He died very bravely, facing it squarely, even making a little joke. He died fighting for his world (as he and we knew he eventually would) and for his family. The last thing he did, before he went into battle, was to look to his family's safety and tell them he loved them. (Contrast Jack on both points: surrounded by dead loved ones, unable to say "I love you".) Jack and Gwen spend the last episode fighting to save Ianto's niece and nephew. (And thanks to that hefty Torchwood paycheck, surely the Davies are set.)
As sorry as I am to lose SF TV's only same-sex relationship, as a childless aunty, I take some comfort in the image of a gay (?) man, with no children of his own, laying down his life in a fight to protect his sister's children, thousands of children from backgrounds like his, every child. Contrast the government types, whose only concern is to protect their own kids: other peoples' children are disposable.
Ianto didn't die in vain. His defiance (and the defiance he inspired in Jack) caused the 456 to lash out. In lashing out, murdering Ianto, a building full of innocent people, and poor bloody Clem, they gave their enemies a way to defeat them. Burn in hell, you slimy crackheads.
These thoughts soothe me, but I'm heartbroken, and astonished by the depth of my grief. I can't share fandom's indignation, but my gods, if any person who laughs or sneers at our mourning, I'll turn their nose upsidedown so that when it rains, they'll drown.
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Date: 2009-07-14 01:24 am (UTC)Still angry. I have to stop thinking about all this some time soon, I hope. That or go bananas.
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Date: 2009-07-14 01:38 am (UTC)