Jack/Ianto = romance

[beccaelizabeth]

or at least the first half of a romance.

the book I'm reading quotes a set of 'rules' from Reading the Romance by Janice Radway.
Numbered 1-13, they're quoted in other books on Google.


1. The heroine’s social identity is thrown into question.
2. The heroine reacts antagonistically to an aristocratic male.
3. The aristocratic male responds ambiguously to the heroine.
4. The heroine interprets the hero’s behavior as evidence of a purely sexual interest in her.
5. The heroine responds to the hero’s behavior with anger or coldness.
6. The hero retaliates by punishing the heroine.

7. The heroine and hero are physically and/or emotionally separated.

8. The hero treats the heroine tenderly.
9. The heroine responds warmly to the hero’s act of tenderness.
10. The heroine reinterprets the hero’s ambiguous behavior as the product of a previous hurt.
11. The hero proposes/openly declares his love for/demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the heroine with a supreme act of tenderness.
12. The heroine responds sexually and emotionally to the hero.
13. The heroine’s identity is restored.


Theory: Ianto is the heroine, and we're up to 7.

See Ianto is a classic romance heroine, except for the having of boy parts. Receptionist, secretary, food provider, caregiver. Underappreciated and excluded. Woe is he. And then there's this dashing older man to sweep him off his feet, after suitable complications.


1. 'social identity' sounds like one of those phrases I'd be better off looking up in more detail, but just to note that Ianto sees his work at Torchwood 3 as a step down from what he was doing at 1, and his world got all smashed quite recently.
2. would threatening to kill Jack count as antagonistically?
3. Jack threatens him right back... and kisses him, keeps him employed, and responds to the stopwatch suggestion. And then kisses someone else.
4. Owen says Ianto's just the part time shag... and while Ianto denies it, well, the kissing thing could make him feel pretty bad about it.
5. Ianto gets annoyed, maybe. Ianto reacts coldly and changes sides, yep.
6. I wouldn't say Jack punishes Ianto... but karma sure does, with the misery-while-dead thing.
7. Seperated several times in a row - ending up with the TARDIS thing and probably five or six months apart.

The interesting thing is that with the death thing we get a highly condensed happy ending right there in episode 13 - they're seperated, they get back together, there's kissing, yaays!
Only then we get seperation again.


I think the problem will come if TPTB don't think they're writing a romance. I mean, we can clearly write one for them - hello to a year of fanfic of that very type. But if the series doesn't notice what number we're on? Woe and lack of payoff.

... now I'm wanting to go through fanfic seeing how it fits 8-13. Because 1-7 are set up already. Some stories do the whole set still anyway. And sometimes I read an 8-13 happy ever after fic and feel a bit rushed, cause it's all payoff without suspense, on account of the canon did the suspense part already.


Now there's a whole seperate thing I could write about how this 'romance' pattern is kinda creepy and actually having a happy snuggly we get along so well romantic relationship in the background of a different genre ie sf would be pretty cool, but I'm supposed to be reading and not thinking about boykissing at all anyway.


PS Am not saying they necessarily set out to write it, am saying that an audience with these genre expectations in mind pick out moments and see this story real clear. Yesno? Yes.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Have you read S. Thompson's classic "Romancing the Slash" (using Blakes7 examples)? I think it's still on line somewhere. She says that a lot of slash stories follow the Regency romance pattern, and a lot follow the antagonistic-banter romcom pattern.

[beccaelizabeth]

google cannot find it for me, so no.
sounds about right though.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

People were noticing this after the first episode. He's a classic "Golden Age of Cinema" secretary and Jack's a classic GAC male hero.

[emlyn-rune.livejournal.com]

If you look at Ianto in fanfic he's often put in the role of the fainting-maiden-in-need-of-rescue (preferably by Jack). (And now I have a very disturbing picture of him as one of the Regency-era maidens on the cover of a tacky romance novel...)