tencrush | I WUV YOU IANTO

A brief post about LOVE, like I promised. Or more specifically, about "I love you" and Children of Earth. I've heard from one of GDL's panels at DragonCon that there was a reciprocal "I love you" in Ianto's death scene in Day Four, but it removed at the request of JB and GDL. You may be surprised to know that I am GODDAMN HAPPY about that. That scene was fucking awful, man. It made me cry, yes, Ianto was soon to be dead, but Christ what a cringeworthy sappy piece of shit scene that was. I was upset at the time that there WASN'T an "I love you" from Jack in that scene, I'll admit, but my actual upset wasn't about those words and that moment, it was about the fact that there wasn't anything even remotely approaching a relationship in which those words could have been spoken up until that scene.

What Children of Earth did, for me, above anything else, was tell me that I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG. Way back when, when I started thinking that Jack/Ianto was a bit squicky, and I talked and I talked and I talked and people talked to me, and everyone started convincing each other that we should be reading between the lines and there was more to their emotional bond than we were being shown, all that stuff was thrown out the window in Days One to Four of Children of Earth. There wasn't. There hadn't been. And so all those thoughts I had back then, that Jack was essentially fucking an employee, not really giving anything back emotionally, despite the fact that that employee, who was younger, less experienced, emotionally broken and vulnerable, was very obviously falling in love with him, all that stuff was true. My inklings and instincts that Jack was being a user and was, in fact, a bit of a dick, that really was the case. Not only was there nothing going on, emotionally, in Series One or Two, but when that subject did start coming up in CoE, it was shot down, their interactions became hugely uncomfortable to watch, and a sudden redemption on that front on Ianto's deathbed did absolutely nothing to change that. Too little, too late. It made me hate Jack, far more than I'm sure it was meant to, but it did. I'm glad Jack didn't say "I love you", it would probably have made me hate him even more.

The reason all this stuff still bothers me is pretty simple. I had these bad feelings about Jack during S2 of Torchwood, this inkling that he used people and acted like an arsehole, and used his immortality as an excuse, in his own head, anyway, for how he treated mere mortals emotionally. For me, those feelings were confirmed in CoE when the big, climactic, dramatic drama happened. And the thing is, I have these same feelings about the Doctor. Well, no, not the Doctor, Ten, specifically. This niggling feeling that he's been acting like a dick, and that he uses his emo as an excuse to treat people like shit. In fact with the Doctor it's far less niggling, and far more blatant. I don't want to feel this way about the Doctor, and I'm very, very afraid that, as with Jack, these things will come into play in the final furlong. I DO NOT WANT.

I never really cared about the fact that I disliked Jack, Jack's not a big deal, but the Doctor? I watch this shit with my kid, man, I don't want to have him squeeing over monsters and sonic screwdrivers and TARDISes while I sit by on the sofa and fume and cringe and hate Ten. I don't want all this serious manpain in Who, and I certainly don't want these HINTS of serious manpain and emotional retardation to become CANON. I don't mind hints, I don't mind it when I can read things into this kiddie show, I like being given ambiguity and subtext, things to enjoy on another level while my child hides behind the sofa, that's all great, it's cool. Actual canonical emo and manpain and emotional manipulation? Not so much.

I hear a lot of people saying that it sounds like Moffat's tenure might be a bit much in the way of jelly babies and crappy monsters and silliness. GOOD. I, for one, cannot wait for this development. Bring it on. And Russell? Go make SRSDRAMA somewhere else. I won't be watching.

ETA: LOL, though. I've been criticising Russell T Davies for like two years now, and what was my major complaint about Jack/Ianto? It was Russell, you're not doing a very good job of showing us a relationship between two equals that isn't mildly emotionally abusive and isn't primarily about sex. I was totally wrong. He did a great job of showing us a relationship that wasn't between two equals, was mildly emotionally abusive and was primarily about sex. Russell is, in fact, very good at his job. Who would have thought?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

smirnoffmule.livejournal.com

I agree with you about the lack of mutual ILU, and I agree with much of what you're saying about Jack's character, though it doesn't cause me to dislike him - I find flawed, fucked up characters more interesting, tbh. I agree too that Jack and Ianto's relationship came from this very fucked up and dark place. I think they actually worked surprisingly amicably and well considering the levels of both their baggage and maladjustment - Ianto's recent and traumatic bereavement, Jack's involvement in that, Jack being Jack with all attendant man!pain, their working relationship, Ianto's mortality always being an unspoken third party etc.

For me, the lack of mutual ILUs saved the scene from descending entirely into cheesy, OTT melodrama, because sometimes people don't say what they ought to say right when they should, and then it's too late, and such is life (and death). I think less is often more in these scenes which are meant to be both sad and beautiful, and it gave the whole scene a bittersweet edge. Far more meaning and sadness and poignancy was packed into that "Don't!" than could have gone into a cliche ILU.

Also, IMHO, deathbed ILUs have limited value anyway - if Jack had said it at that point, I still might not have believed him. I think they did love each other on some level, but theirs wasn't storybook romantic love, and I'm glad it didn't end like that.

From:

tencrush

Yeah, I think the reason I see things this way is primarily because I always liked Ianto more than Jack. Ianto kept me watching the show, and I think when you come from an angle of preferring Ianto to Jack, you really end up disliking Jack for the way he treated him.

For me, I'd have been more emotionally satisfied if the fucked-up angle had been played up more, their tension and discomfort with each other had been allowed to grow, and then Ianto had gone off somewhere to do something brave or heroic or foolish without Jack and been shot in the face, bam, dead. Leaving Jack with nothing and leaving everything unsaid. The clichéd soap-opera deathbed thing did absolutely nothing for me in the way of hammering home mortality and missed opportunities or whatever it was that RTD says he was trying to get across.

From:

santousha.livejournal.com

I'm meh on the lack of 'I love you'. If it had been put in I would have cringed. Till the end I still had hope Ianto would dump Jack :/

Jack was essentially fucking an employee, not really giving anything back emotionally, despite the fact that that employee,...interactions became hugely uncomfortable to watch

This is the main reason I never got fully behind the pairing and one of the reasons I hate the character of Jack (the other reason is JB's 'actoring' :/).

But that said, I do think that there were feelings there on Jack's side, while it wasn't love, I do think that there was some affection for Ianto bc the sex could not have been 'that' good.

Jack was just too broken to give Ianto what he needed and Ianto was too damaged to leave. They both got either too complacent or just neither of them wanted it bad enough.

From:

tencrush

I'm with you on the dumping. I really thought that was where it was heading in that scene where Jack tells Ianto about Alice. Ianto had a real "Hey, you know what, this thing isn't going anywhere, why don't you go fuck yourself?" vibe going on in that scene.

I WUV YOU IANTO

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