#janto i feel like is more impactful to me because like.

[humany-wumany-stuff]

My thoughts on Gwen & Jack

Ok first of all, I have never been a fan of Gwen Cooper, which had nothing to do with the fact that I ship Janto with all my heart, but rather with the fact that (even though I love the writers for giving us Torchwood in the first place) her character was badly written. But this post is not about why I don’t like Gwen Cooper, this is how I see the dynamics between Jack, Ianto and Gwen. I want to write this down for those who still like to discuss Torchwood and its characters (I know I’m late to the fold, but I also know there are still people who like to have these little discussions). But mostly because I see a lot of posts either saying that Ianto was a second choice for Jack, or that Jack was never interested in Gwen. I think both are wrong.

It’s a bit long, so I’ll put it under the cut

To me, there was definitely chemistry between Jack and Gwen, from the very beginning. You can tell at the end of the first episode, that Gwen has had a major impact on Jack, that he looks up to her and to how she sees the world, still so hopeful and caring. I personally think Gwen changed his views on Torchwood a little. For a long time, he was just killing time until he got to see his Doctor, because he only chose to join Torchwood after he found out it would take almost 2 centuries until he’d meet the Doctor. But Gwen showed him that he can do more than just deal with the aliens and the alien tech. 

I think that is why he hired her. I know that she is portrayed as ‘the heart of Torchwood’, ‘the one who cares the most’, ‘the most empathic of them all’, and I don’t really agree with that. Because Gwen was so often blinded by what she thought was right instead of how the things she did, would make them feel (like when she believed so firmly that bringing Jonah’s mother to Flat Holm was the right thing to do, that she didn’t consider how that would make the both of them feel). Her moral compass (whether that compass was right all the time is a different matter all together) was stronger than her faith in Jack as a leader, which is also understandable, because Jack basically hired her for that. He took in Gwen to challenge himself, to constantly ask himself if what he was doing, was the right thing to do and not just ‘the Torchwood way’. Because we know that Jack wasn’t always a fan of what Torchwood used to stand for.

But most of all, Gwen is different from the rest of the team, because she sees the hero in Jack. Yes, the others follow him and trust him as their leader, but Gwen clearly idolises him and sees this great hero in him. The immortal, time-traveling hero, who tells stories about the universe and always saves the day: remind you of anyone? Exactly, the Doctor. That is the kind of person that Gwen sees when she looks at Jack and I think that Jack knows that. And he likes it. Because that’s the kind of person he wants to be. Remember that the Doctor was the one who got Jack on the straight (ahum) and narrow in the first place. So of course Jack likes being around someone who sees him as the person that he wants to be.

Ianto, however, is completely different. At first, he sees Jack as a monster, the man who killed Lisa. Even before that, I think Ianto didn’t like Jack. Yes, he was obviously attracted to him, but I always felt like Ianto was extra reserved around Jack for some reason, maybe because of the rumours in Torchwood London, or because of how Jack treated aliens like his girlfriend. In my interpretation, Ianto felt attracted to Jack from the beginning, but he struggled with that attraction, because he also hated Jack at the same time. 

But over time, Ianto sees different sides of Jack and starts to understand the decisions he used to judge. I think an important line in the Captain Jack Harkness episode is where he says “I thought she was still Lisa” when trying to dignify hiding her from the team. It is so different from when he was always so sure that she was only half-converted and that is was still possible to get her back. So clearly at that point he understands that he was wrong and that Jack was right to shoot her. He clearly understands that Jack has to make the hard choices, which I think he is trying to in that CJH episode: Jack isn’t there so he is trying to fill his shoes by making the hard choice in leaving them in 1941 rather than opening the rift.

So Ianto sees Jack as a monster, but learns that not all monsters are bad. He sees all the sides of Jack, not just the bad ones, but also not just the good ones like Gwen does. In CoE, I think that is portrayed very well. When they find out about what Jack did in 1965, Gwen and Ianto react completely differently. Gwen firsts believes defiantly that Jack would never do or have done something so cruel and when Jack admits it, she is disappointed and confused, because she can’t match that Jack to the Jack in her mind. Ianto however, seems to immediately realise that Clem’s story might be true and when Jack admits it, he doesn’t blame Jack, but feels sorry for the weight he’s been carrying all that time.

So yes, I think Jack was in love with Gwen, but he was mostly in love with the idea of Gwen and the idea that Gwen had of him. She was the one who wasn’t broken yet, and who still didn’t see how broken he was. She was a beacon of hope for him, proof that Torchwood doesn’t have to break everyone, that it is possible to lead the lives they live and still hope, still fight for the right reasons and still be a good person. When Gwen gets married, I think he knows that that almost-thing that they never had, truly becomes impossible. That he will never get to be the man that Gwen saw in him.

But it was different with Ianto: Jack was in love with Gwen, but he loved Ianto. Because even though Gwen might at some points have known more about him, Ianto was the one who knew him. And whereas Gwen was always trying to change Jack, Ianto was the one who challenged him to be himself, because he believed that the good was already in Jack. We see that difference in the first episode and in CoE. In the first episode, Gwen wants to change Jack and Torchwood into an organisation that helps people. In CoE, Ianto says “The Jack I know would've stood up to them”. He’s not trying to make Jack better then he is, he’s reminding Jack of the person he already knows him to be.

And that is why Jack chooses Ianto over Gwen. He clearly could have had Gwen if he really wanted to. She gave him plenty of opportunities: “I love Rhys, but not as much as I love you”, or “no one else will have me”. But as much as he is in love with Gwen, he is aware that the idea that Gwen has of him and thus also the idea that he has of Gwen&himself are fake, they aren’t real. But he knows that what he has with Ianto is real. I think that’s what he realises in the Year that never was. That Ianto chose to be with him after seeing the bad sides of him. That Ianto loves him for who he is, and not for who he could be.

Wow this ended up being so much longer than I intended.

I just needed to get this off my chest.

#Torchwood #overanalysing Janto again #my little rant #only not so little #Janto is just so beautiful #and I can't believe we'll probably never see them again on screen

[stormysummerskyed]

Torchwood: A study in fandom

Yes, my last Torchwood post was a little bit snarky, but I've calmed my rabid inner fangirl and given some thought to the unique entity that it Torchwood.

Contrary to my usual habits in TV series consumption, I didn't wallow in Tumblr gifs and youtube fanmade videos and then move on to get addicted to a new series. Oh, don't get me wrong. I totally went down a dark fangirl hole of janto gifs and fanvids that hurt me in the feels, but the moving on part failed to happen.

You see, Torchwood might not be on our TV screens anymore, but it's still rolling along strongly in the form of original cast audio drama produced by Big Finish audio productions. They've made a season 5 that follows on from Miracle Day called Aliens Among Us, but probably the thing that I've been enjoying the most is the fact they've been able to duck and weave back into the timeline of the show and slot in new "episodes" that feature Owen, Tosh, and of course Ianto.

One in particular, titled Broken, runs alongside several episodes in the middle of season one, and deals with Ianto's personal fallout after the death of his girlfriend Lisa, while also filling in the gaps about how and when Jack and Ianto's relationship started, which was never explained in the actual TV series.

The Torchwood fandom is still alive, maybe not as strong as it once was when it was on TV, but new audiences are discovering the TV series all the time thanks to Netflix, creating new fans as the old ones slip away. It very much seems to be a shifting sands of fandoms that I've never seen with anything else. And a lot of these new fans seem happy enough to embrace the alternate media in which this series had continued to exist. Unfortunately, as the years goes by, the fandom is shrinking little by little, and these days things like online petitions or sending packets of coffee beans to the BBC (in honour of Ianto being the coffeeboy) don't to anything to sway anyone. Even with the actual-on-google-maps-landmark of Ianto’s Shrine in Cardiff, Wales and the considerable influence of John Barrowman wanting to get Torchwood back on TV, the chances of that happening seem minuscule at best.

But in all the fandom to-and-fro, the one thing that keeps coming up again and again is the death of Ianto Jones. As new fans are come along, it creates a whole new group of people outraged over the character's death. This is fascinating to me from several different perspectives.

Look, I will never agree that killing Ianto off was the right move to make, just as I believe that the Torchwood writers and show runners will ever believe they made a mistake. Or, on the small chance they did decide it was a mistake, they'd never admit to it, anyway.

I think the fan backlash is exactly what tells the writers they did the right thing. The fact is that Jack and Ianto's relationship became that much more polarizing because of Ianto's untimely and sudden death. The tragedy of it makes the fans more invested, the wasted potential frustrates and upsets them, so in many ways, killing of Ianto worked fantastically for the series. Unfortunately, for the continuation of the series, not so much. There was a huge Ianto-sized hole in Miracle Day, and while some of the behind-the-scenes stuff I've seen and read about Torchwood, the creators/writers talk about Gwen being the heart and soul of the show (and in some ways was true) I think they completely missed the fact that Ianto was just as much this, if not more so. He was the warmth and comfort of the show, and without him, things just seemed kind of hollow.

With Torchwood continuing on through audio dramas, there's always going to be the possibility in the fandom's mind that characters can be brought back. In fact, for the next instalment of Aliens Among Us, the gossip on the internet is that Yvonne Hartman, who ran Torchwood One in London and was killed during the battle of Canary Warf, would be coming back. Of course, the fans will be all ready to jump on the "bring Ianto Jones back next!" bandwagon, but I think it would be a safe bet to say Ianto is the single character they will never, ever bring back, no matter what. Don't get me wrong. I'm right there with the bring-Ianto-back brigade, but there are any number of reasons I can see why the creators/writers wouldn't do it.

I've seen a few ideas floating around the internet about how Ianto could be saved or brought back. Probably my two favorite are one; having the 13th Doctor save or revive him somehow. Or two, after the BBC audio drama House of the Dead, (spoilers! Just skip ahead if you haven't got to this audio drama yet and don't want to know what happens) there were fan theories floating around that Ianto had actually been fully resurrected and wasn't just a ghost. When he stayed behind to close the rift, he got sucked into it and is now trapped between worlds, or possibly got flung out again in a different time. There's even been some theories that this could make Ianto immortal like Jack from absorbing rift energy.

If they were going to bring Ianto back, I actually quite like this option, because I think it would give his character an extra dimension that would be amazing. He would still need to be the same Ianto, but his character always did have those tiny hints of darkness, so you could only imagine that if Ianto did get spat out of the rift in a different time and was somewhat, if not completely immortal like Jack, he might have spent years or decades trying to get back, so his character could be a little edgier, a little darker. Plus imagine all the backstory of where he'd been and what he'd been doing for all that time that the writers could play with.

However, as wonderful as all that probably sounds to the hardcore #janto fans, if on the tiny, tiny chance Ianto did get brought back, I doubt the writers/creators would ever make him immortal, and it comes back to why they killed Ianto in the first place. Jack's immortality is meant to be a curse, and the writers have already stated that killing Ianto was meant to demonstrate this in a way nothing else ever had. To bring Ianto back would lessen the impact of this. To make Ianto immortal so he and Jack can be together forever? Yeah, not going to happen, because immortality no longer seems like such a curse, does it? And I suppose that is where fanfiction will always fill the gaps. Go on to Ao3 and you can probably find any number of CoE fixit scenarios, or fictions where Ianto becomes immortal like Jack. But in the cannon of the the series still being overseen by Richard T Davies and produced in audio format by Big Finish, sadly I feel Ianto Jones will stay dead and buried for good.

#thoughts #torchwood #Ianto Jones #captain jack harkness #famdom