As tonight is the finale of season 2, I thought I’d better attempt to write something about Fragments before tonight’s episode swept all that away. But despite enjoying Fragments best of all the episodes this season, I don’t seem to have coherent thoughts about it. In fact I have – appropriately enough – just fragments of reaction.
1. Jack
Not particularly pleased to see either John or Grey back. The whole ‘lost brother’ storyline for Jack seems one crisis too many. I mean, being an intergalactic time travelling con-man, who saw his best friend killed at age 16, was totally amoral until redeemed by true love in the form of the Doctor, was subsequently made immortal and then abandoned by the Doctor, spent a couple of hundred years of serial suicide only in order to be rejected by the Doctor again… was this not *enough*? Isn’t an absent (possibly evil) brother and psychotic ex a little tiny bit of overkill? Seriously, do we need to know any more about Jack’s tragic past, when there are aliens to hunt and the world to save on a regular basis?
This is my resistance to heroes coming through, probably. The piling on of ways in which Jack is special only risk making me dislike him for an attention grabbing tosser.
Of course, being an attention grabbing tosser is part of Jack’s charm, but I would hope that the writers themselves were aware of where they were in danger of going over the top. However, I seem to be the only one I know who doesn’t find Jack’s tragic past fascinating, so perhaps it’s just me.
2.Owen
On the subject of tragic pasts; it really says something about how obnoxious Owen used to be that it’s taken being dumped by a potential true love, being killed, being brought back as a zombie and then being given a tragic past in which he was a much nicer person to make him even remotely likable. It’s almost become touching, the fact that even after all of that, he’s still a git 🙂
3. Toshiko
I’m afraid I was too busy being horrified at UNIT to notice whether this told us anything new about Tosh. We already knew she was a technical genius and a simultaneously strong but fragile person. I suppose it puts a new slant on her relationship with Jack, though sadly (yet again) casting him as the big damn hero. That ‘silhouetted in the light of the door’ shot was so unsubtle it made me want to throw things. Yes, I get the message, thanks!
But really, UNIT as some kind of Guantanamo bay? Tosh with marks on her face that indicate she’s been beaten up?! ‘Your rights as a citizen have been revoked’? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so chilling. Have I missed something, because this is not the Britain I live in – or if it is, I want to know so that I can make it stop! It adds an ugly note to the fact that Martha is working for these people, and it makes Jack’s ‘I am your saviour’ entrance deeply distasteful, because it’s quite clear that he works with these people too.
4. Ianto
But now onto the squee. What can I say about Ianto’s backstory that hasn’t already been said by the hoards of other people who were totally delighted by it? It’s certainly tipped me over from watching Torchwood with mild liking and interest to being completely invested in the Jack/Ianto relationship, because Ianto is so cool!
I’m not one of those people who thinks that Ianto was born in a suit – I look on his appearance in Countrycide as being his normal mode of dressing, so seeing him in jeans didn’t immediately make me go ‘oh, Ianto’s trying to seduce Jack’. If anything, I thought this was normal, pre-Torchwood, casual Ianto, who had thought that getting himself into a position in which he could rescue Jack from life threatening peril would be enough to earn him a job. Then when it wasn’t, he tried appealing to Jack’s sympathy – ‘I’m emotionally damaged and I’ll work for nothing.’ When those two approaches didn’t work, however, he finally resorted to appealing to Jack’s baser nature by making himself pretty – putting on a nice suit – and moving the low key attraction that had been there from the start right out in the open. (Seriously, who puts on a suit to go pterodactyl hunting if they don’t have an ulterior motive?)
Ianto is very desperate to get into Torchwood for Lisa’s sake, and I think that he would not have refused to sleep with the boss if that’s what it took. But I don’t tend to read this as that sort of an offer. A woman who makes herself pretty in order to get a man to do something is not necessarily offering sex, not even if she flirts as well – she’s just improving the man’s mood; improving the odds. So I see it as Ianto making himself pretty merely in order to make Jack feel more receptive to him. The real message is ‘look how useful I am at catching pterodactyls (also I look good in a suit), not ‘give me a job and you can have me.’
Why do I think this? I think partly because the director says the segment was intended as a romantic comedy – and to me it comes across as too amusing and lighthearted for something that says ‘and Jack recruited Ianto as his personal whore.’
Also, I think it’s pretty obvious that Ianto is taken by surprise by the sexual spark between him and Jack. He’ll do flirting, he’ll do wearing nice clothes for the boss, but put in a perfect position to offer more he doesn’t do so. He walks away, clearly distressed. At his moment of triumph he’s clearly thinking ‘oh shit, what have I got myself into?’ as well as ‘God, I quite like him and now I have to betray him’, as well as ‘God, I want him and how can I stop myself from betraying Lisa?’
But Ianto’s distress also points out his strength – he’s in absolute mental anguish, but he’s still planning, still making sensible on the spot decisions, still calmly going through what has to be done, and persisting until he gets what he wants. This man is no poor, unfortunate woobie whose love Jack is using and abusing. If there was a character in this series who could put up with Jack and his issues, it would be Ianto.
And I think that’s why this segment made everyone squee so much; it showed the Jack/Ianto relationship was in place from day one. There is no way that these two are mere indifferent fuckbuddies. It makes the emotional meltdown of both characters in Cyberwoman suddenly make total sense; they each felt betrayed by the other and that hurt because they each cared about the other.
It even makes sense of why Ianto spends Countrycide in civvies. If he wore a suit to go dinosaur hunting, it wasn’t practicality that made him dress casually on the field trip. It was a mute dig against Jack.
So it turns out that this was a relationship that began on the first day they met, survived Ianto using T3 (and by extension, Jack) to try and save his girlfriend, survived the real Captain Jack, and Jack running off to the Doctor without saying goodbye, and is now stronger than it ever was. After bringing Owen back and unleashing Death on the world, Jack can hardly claim any moral superiority in the matter of ‘foolish things I did to save someone I loved’. And now it only remains to be seen whether the relationship can stand up to Jack’s psychotic ex-boyfriend.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Ianto isn’t doomed. It would be very like me to have fallen in love with an awesome character just in time for the show to kill him off. (I managed it with Qui-Gon Jinn, Marcus from Babylon 5, One-Eye in Elfquest, both Norrington and Gillette in PotC and numerous others whose names escape me for now. I have a long track record of this!)
It would also be very like the show to get rid of Jack’s boyfriend in a horribly tragic way in order to give Jack something new to angst over.
But I’ll cling to the thought that when has Torchwood ever done anything expected? And hope that Jack/Ianto carries on strong into the next season. It is at least 76% of why I’m watching the show at all 🙂
After what’s seemed like an interminable slump, I have news again, and lo! it is good 🙂 The Witch’s Boy is finally up on Amazon.com HERE currently with no blurb and no cover picture, but I’m pretty sure that will come once they get their act together.
It’s also had a lovely review from reader Christian Otto and, call me sentimental, but there’s something really special about getting a review from someone who doesn’t know you, who you haven’t asked for a review, but who has just done it because they liked the book. It makes me get all teary eyed and proud 🙂
Christian says: I just loved this book. I would have read it in one session, if there weren’t those stupid needs like eating and sleeping. This book definitely is a must-read.
If anyone is still unsure as where to categorize this book, even though it doesn’t fit easily into categories, I can offer my personal impression that for me it feels like a mixture of Sara Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths and Lord of the Rings, while still having it’s own character. So I’m quite sure that anyone who liked those books, will also like The Witch’s Boy. But to everyone else I would also strongly recommend to give it a try. Read more
And woohoo, I get mentioned in the same breath as Tolkien and not in even in a sentence that starts ‘this book isn’t a patch on…’ 😉
Behold me squeeing and deciding that Christian is a man of great and praiseworthy taste 😀 SQUEEE!
Not much writing goes on when the children are at home, so I’ve been spending the day mostly watching this vid by ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
fan_eunice” because MPreg is canon in Torchwood – though perhaps not in this exact form:
Jack is keeping his baby
Though possibly you may need to read this first, just to make everything clear: What baby, for crying out loud?!!
All I can say is LOL! Also ‘best vid I’ve ever seen’ 🙂
Just a quick review of ‘Man Oh Man: Writing m/m fiction for kinks and cash’ by Josh Lanyon
Though ‘review’ might be putting it too strongly – ‘squee’ might be closer 🙂
If you go back through my posts on this LJ you’re bound to come across one where I gushed mightily about how wonderful Josh Lanyon’s Adrien English series of mysteries was. Josh combines a strong mystery plot, with a more subtle but equally nuanced romance plot between bookseller Adrien and homicide detective Jake Riordan. A romance that is tragically hampered by many things, but chiefly Jake’s reluctance to come out of the closet.
Given that Josh’s books are high on my list of ‘my favourite m/m fiction ever’ it was extremely exciting to find out that he was writing a ‘how to’ book about just that; how to write m/m fiction in such a way that publishers will want to publish it, and readers will want to read it. It’s always good, with these sort of books, to know that the author can practice what they are preaching.
I have to admit that I haven’t even finished reading the book, which may seem like a bad time to review it. It might be with a fiction book where a poor ending could let down the promise of everything that’s gone before, but in this case I don’t think that’s likely to happen. Three quarters of the way through and nothing is likely to take away from what’s been an amusing, witty and eminently sensible book so far.
I’ve got to admit too that I’m not exactly un-biased. Josh includes quotes from numerous authors, publishers, readers and reviewers, and among them there are quotes from me – and what a thrill that is! Squee! I get cited as some sort of expert! Behold me spouting my mouth off about such topics as ‘sex or plot?’ and the perennial ‘why do women read m/m fiction,’ in a loud and aggressive know it all way 😉
Speaking of knowing it all, to be frank, there isn’t a lot in here which would be unfamiliar to people who read <lj user=”metafandom”> on a regular basis. The fanfiction community has pretty much thrashed out the questions of ‘why slash?’ and ‘what constitutes good writing?’ and ‘why shouldn’t I write my men like teenage girls if I want to?’ etc But this is possibly the first time those questions have been raised in the m/m publishing community, and Josh has done a very good job of pulling together most of the answers. He has also realigned the emphasis, from writing fanfiction to writing profiction which has a chance of being accepted by a m/m market which is growing, vibrant, and already beginning to become more choosy about the quality of the stuff it’s taking on.
If you are interested in writing m/m fiction professionally, coming out of the fanfiction community, I think that’s a new perspective that makes a big difference. Maybe there is such a thing as too much realism? Maybe worrying too much about your sex scenes is counterproductive when you should be concentrating on your plot?
I’m certainly finding that although I haven’t yet found a lot that’s new to me, the specific slant, and Josh’s evident enthusiasm and respect for m/m writing has got me working again on a better, tighter plot for ‘Boys of Summer’ – and any book that sends me back to my own writing with renewed purpose has got to be a good buy!
Eeeee! I have a fantastic new review for ‘Captain’s Surrender’, and it’s from Ruth Sims, author of ‘The Phoenix’, which is one of my favorite m/m books. It’s extra specially wonderful to get a review from someone whose own writing I admire so much; I get to be honored as well as squeeful! 🙂
the protagonists, 20-year-old red-haired Josh Andrews and Lt. Peter Kenyon, are well-drawn, intelligent, and sympathetic young men who just happen to be hotter than a cannon barrel at Waterloo.
LOL! I love that! The whole review is over at Ruth’s LiveJournal here and I will be smiling about it all day 😀
I have a short story out as a free read. It’s set somewhere in the middle of ’Captain’s Surrender’, though it’s more of an erotic read than the book itself. Some comments had lead me to believe that some readers saw Josh as a natural ’bottom’, so I wrote this in reaction 🙂
By: Alex Beecroft | Other books by Alex Beecroft
Published By: Linden Bay Romance, LLC
ISBN LBRFREE000003
Word Count: 2975
Heat Index 5
Available in: Adobe Acrobat, HTML
Price: $0.00
download link here
About the book
For the sake of their lives and careers, Josh and Peter agreed to put their need for one another behind them. But then a luxurious and sensual dinner together becomes foreplay, leading Josh to an act of insubordination that Captain Peter Kenyon will never forget.
An excerpt from the book
“I confess I have regretted we did not have longer together. Did not do all the things I would have liked to try. I have dreamed… No. No, I won’t even say that. God knows we neither of us need any encouragement and I will not…”
“Take advantage of me?” The smile has grown until his cheeks are aching with it. He shoves his chair back from the table, stands. He’s been planning this ’one last time’ for weeks, and he knows exactly what to do.
The politenesses of society are so ingrained in Kenyon that he rises in echo, and stands, looking bemused and helpless and rather lost before the gold and red drapery of the Pellegrini above the mantle. Slowly, but firmly, Josh takes him by both wrists and backs him into the wall, where he stands, rigid with a mixture of terror and desire—very still, but his chest heaving. “I don’t want to risk your life,” he tries to explain. “Josh, we were going to…stop…we agreed this was…”
“Peter,” says Josh, carefully removing the powdered wig and setting it on top of the globe of the world, where it looks appropriate but rather undersized. “Shut up.” Peter looks at him then, really looks at him, startled, his eyes wide and dark with outraged dignity and arousal.
Josh loosens the knot in Peter’s cravat, undoes the two little buttons beneath and leans in, touching his mouth to Peter’s skin, the collarbone hard against his lips.
A very Marian evening
For the first time in what seems like several centuries, Andrew and I went out in the evening on Saturday, leaving the kids at home with a babysitter. We went to Ely Cathedral, where the
Mediaeval Baebes were doing a concert.
The Mediaeval Baebes are sort of the Spice Girls of early medieval music. I thought there was a slight ‘re-enactment fayre’ fakery about them until they began to sing, at which point I forgave them for unashamedly pandering to the ‘I could have been your white knight and carried you away’ dreams of the predominantly older men in the audience 🙂
But boy can they sing! The music is ancient, but given new and vibrant adaptation, and one of the band would explain the story of each piece before they sang it – so each piece was like a glimpse into the strange world of the past as well as being gorgeous to hear. Being medieval, there was much warning of the transience of beauty, the immanence of death, the tragedy of existence etc, but also in continual counterpoint a celebration of beauty and fun and things that made life worth living.
One of the members of the band – I’m not a sufficient fan to know which one – had recently had a baby and had brought it along, where it was wonderfully silent except to gurgle endearingly at the end of a lullaby 🙂
But the concert was held in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral, and the band played on a dais at the altar end of the room, looked down on by a statue of Mary:
They seemed as hyped by the significance of this as I was – as an awful lot of their repertoire consists of songs to Mary or about Mary and Jesus. Towards the end of the evening they sang a lullaby which was clearly Biblical fanfic, in which a woman says goodbye to her infant son, knowing that Herod has sent out the order to have all male children killed. In that setting, with that music, it almost brought me to tears.
Thankfully they also sang some cheerful and amusing stuff – I particularly liked the medieval bawdy song about the man who had drunk too much to get it up; which they accompanied with appropriate arm gestures 😀
It was very interesting to be in a context and listening to music which was so very much a part of a female tradition. I found it something of an eye-opener. I’ve never had much time for Mary in the past, but perhaps now I will 🙂
Photography was forbidden during the concert but here are the band signing stuff afterwards:
And my realplayer is terribly disorganized so I couldn’t find that lullaby, but here is a sample of the sort of music they played. They played it LOUD and lo! it was good 🙂
Temptasyon by the Mediaeval Baebes
I’ve noticed that people are increasingly dissatisfied with the progress of the Jack/Ianto relationship on Torchwood. ‘Hold on’, they’re saying, ‘we were promised a slowly building relationship between these two, whereas in fact we’ve had the Owen + Tosh show, and last week we got Jack mooning after Gwen. Then we get an episode where Jack and Ianto spend most of the onscreen time together, and what do we get? Nothing.’
And that’s true really. For characters who are sleeping together, these two appear to have no other connection at all. Jack does not comfort Ianto when Ianto is visibly upset, nor does he pick him up when he’s been attacked by the ghostmaker. Ianto does not ask Jack for support, and when at the end he is shaken and frightened he walks abruptly away, as if afraid that Jack is going to say something.
So what is going on with this relationship? Is it a case of veiled homophobia – in that we are happily shown bedroom scenes with Gwen and Rhys, Owen and any woman he can get his hands on, Tosh and Tommy, but are fobbed off with faint kisses in the case of the m/m relationship?
Or is it something else? I have to admit that after last week’s episode – when Jack chased after Gwen at her wedding and danced like a block of stone when forced to acknowledge Ianto – I was deeply disappointed at what looked like a real set back for this relationship that I cared about. But strangely, though everyone else is still feeling that dismay this week, I am oddly reassured by Out of the Rain.
Here we have an opportunity to see how Jack and Ianto interact when they’re together and on their own. And what we see, underneath the professionalism – the fact that they work together flawlessly as a team – is a side of Jack that doesn’t come out anywhere else.
This is a quieter Jack – a Jack less focussed on being the legend of Jack Harkness. Less of the big smiles and the innuendo and the big centre of attention hero personality. More calm, more honesty, more… relaxation, in a way, as though a mask has been dropped.
At the same time there is this noticeable lack of physical contact. Now, in the normal course of things, Jack touches everyone; he’s a very tactile person. But he doesn’t touch Ianto. This reminded me of the ‘asking out on a date’ scene in the first episode. Jack tries to ask Ianto out; Ianto makes sure there’s a desk between them before he even considers it.
So in Out of the Rain I don’t get the impression that Ianto is hankering for physical contact and being rebuffed – I get the impression that he’s relaxed, content, working well and even coming out of his shell a little. And this makes me think that the lack of physical contact is in there because that’s what Ianto wants.
There is, to my mind, an almost tender quality to the silences in this episode; a sense of a relationship which is existing without drama, without needing to be affirmed or shouted about. Again to my mind the fact that Jack does not pick Ianto up, does not appear concerned for his safety is a positive thing – Jack trusts Ianto to be OK, and with good reason, because we’ve seen that Ianto can handle himself. He doesn’t need chivalry.
I suppose what I’m saying is that it could be a disappointing sell out, or it could be that quiet, undemonstrative but content calm is the key-note of the Jack/Ianto relationship. In which case I think that’s rather interesting – unexpected, but very believable, given that they are both men who need to heal from too much pain in their pasts.
I intend to wait and see what the writers do next with the pairing before completely ruling out the ‘sell out’ option, but for now I’m oddly reassured.
March 14th,2008
Torchwood,
TV |
6 Comments
Remember that petition that went round asking the UK government not to deport a young gay man back to Iran, because he would only be executed when he got there? Thank you everyone who signed! We have a partial success – the government has promised to re-think and for now he’s safe.
Here is a further petition which will continue to put the pressure on in case they feel inclined to change their minds:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Stopdeportinggay/
Also – and only ever so slightly loosely connected – there is a new blog in town on the subject of gay historic romance. Owned by Erastes, Lee Rowan, Charlie Cochrane and me, with contributions from our very own Emma Collingwood and several other writers of published historical slash, it’s called The Macaronis, and you can find it here: The Macaronis
says _ocellot_ on livejournal
She’s talking about this article on the science of love in Canadian Living.com magazine, which gives an interesting summary of latest research on brain states in love, interspersed with quotes from romance novels. The whole article is worth reading, but I’ll just quote the conclusion, for obvious reasons 🙂
“Passion needs to be stoked,” says Pfaus, the father of a four-year-old, who appreciates how hard it can be to play lover at the end of a long day of work and parenting. But here’s the incentive: People in loving relationships tend to live longer, perhaps because la vie d’amour has strengthened their immune system, by mitigating the negative health impacts of the stress hormone, cortisol. “If struggle is the essence of life,” says Pfaus, “then so is pleasure.”
In addition, people who enjoy regular sex enjoy better cardiovascular health and age better. Pfaus points to studies that show people who make love three times a week or more appear to others to be about a decade younger than they really are. But Pfaus says the last word must go to Warren, who, as a writer of romance, knows more about human psychology than anyone.
“There’s all kinds of research to prove that women who read romance have more sex,” says Warren. “Every time you read a romance novel, it’s like falling in love again. And by the end of every story, you’re reminded again that true love does happen and it’s worth working for.”
