Torchwood Serenity
Oct. 30th, 2023 04:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI relistened to this undercover as married adventure
and I still think it just isnt very well written
but
you can certainly get from this to a lot of tensions in Ianto and in his relationship with Jack, including the whole 'are we turning into killers' subset about Torchwood and not being normal, and Jack has to make a horrible decision that Ianto wouldnt have on his conscience, and it's a lot of very meaty character stuff if you think about it
just written in a stylised and repetitive way that just... annoys me. A lot. So it isnt fun to listen to.
Undercover as married is a trope for trying out a life together, but while Jack getting home in the evening mostly gets the reliable safe time with Ianto that was the appealing part, Ianto experiences being perceived as an out gay man for probably the first time
and it sucks.
He just experiences it as weeks of homophobic microaggressions and unwanted sexual comments.
Plus he might have volunteered for the 'stepford wife' role but he is really clearly annoyed of it, and the layer of pretend just messes with the couple communication parts, like which bits actually do matter to Ianto and how much Jack should help with what. Lots of niggly things to complain about that seem a lot smaller to a man that gets to leave the house every day.
So Ianto gets a heap of gender role stuff to deal with that is part of the persona but since Ianto is not a man who does anything by halves he also puts so much effort in only to have it just not work out. And the food that somehow is never suitable seems like a small thing, but getting the right food for people is literally Ianto's day job, part of, and memorising small details for security purposes is central to his role around the Hub, and he should be good at this. So either he's missing information on an information gathering trip, or he's having his food rejected for reasons unrelated to those stated. Uncomfortable either way.
I still dont like the writing but I can unpack a rich set of character stuff from it so I'm complaining about the style choices and the music more than the ideas.
I reckon this one is well before the Excellent Barbecue story, because Ianto seems more comfortable in himself by then, even if he's getting the same not one of us treatment from Rhys. Not one of the lads, since he's a man who likes pink and drinks wine. But not one of these neighbours either, even when wine and regular invites to bbq are very much on offer.
There's a layer about class here that's like... keeping up with the Joneses on a repeatedly stated to be middle class community is very much not his native territory. So how is he feeling about that?
Sexuality, gender, and class tensions all in a story about trying to be normal
among normal people
who turn out to actually be trying to kill them.
Those are solid story ingredients.
And fear that they're all very much like each other, soldiers with a fake persona on top, that's a fear that comes up in Torchwood.
... Ianto responding to all this by blowing up the whole estate suggests possibly 'fear' isnt the only word for it though.
And symbolically what is he trying to blow up?
Not the bit of life that he and Jack carved out, that he was trying to get metaphorical about when their house didnt burn. Except oops, there it goes too.
The bit Ianto said about wanting kids one day is bonus ouch.
As is the implied comparison where the neighbours lose their chances and connections because aliens.
It's got all these meaty character theme parts
but I'm probably going to delete it off my phone for now (with disc and download elsewhere)
because I just dont like it.
The choice to go from deliberate repetitive deception to hungover to slightly vodka drunk just means the characters are off all the time, and not in ways I find fun.
Each to their own.
and I still think it just isnt very well written
but
you can certainly get from this to a lot of tensions in Ianto and in his relationship with Jack, including the whole 'are we turning into killers' subset about Torchwood and not being normal, and Jack has to make a horrible decision that Ianto wouldnt have on his conscience, and it's a lot of very meaty character stuff if you think about it
just written in a stylised and repetitive way that just... annoys me. A lot. So it isnt fun to listen to.
Undercover as married is a trope for trying out a life together, but while Jack getting home in the evening mostly gets the reliable safe time with Ianto that was the appealing part, Ianto experiences being perceived as an out gay man for probably the first time
and it sucks.
He just experiences it as weeks of homophobic microaggressions and unwanted sexual comments.
Plus he might have volunteered for the 'stepford wife' role but he is really clearly annoyed of it, and the layer of pretend just messes with the couple communication parts, like which bits actually do matter to Ianto and how much Jack should help with what. Lots of niggly things to complain about that seem a lot smaller to a man that gets to leave the house every day.
So Ianto gets a heap of gender role stuff to deal with that is part of the persona but since Ianto is not a man who does anything by halves he also puts so much effort in only to have it just not work out. And the food that somehow is never suitable seems like a small thing, but getting the right food for people is literally Ianto's day job, part of, and memorising small details for security purposes is central to his role around the Hub, and he should be good at this. So either he's missing information on an information gathering trip, or he's having his food rejected for reasons unrelated to those stated. Uncomfortable either way.
I still dont like the writing but I can unpack a rich set of character stuff from it so I'm complaining about the style choices and the music more than the ideas.
I reckon this one is well before the Excellent Barbecue story, because Ianto seems more comfortable in himself by then, even if he's getting the same not one of us treatment from Rhys. Not one of the lads, since he's a man who likes pink and drinks wine. But not one of these neighbours either, even when wine and regular invites to bbq are very much on offer.
There's a layer about class here that's like... keeping up with the Joneses on a repeatedly stated to be middle class community is very much not his native territory. So how is he feeling about that?
Sexuality, gender, and class tensions all in a story about trying to be normal
among normal people
who turn out to actually be trying to kill them.
Those are solid story ingredients.
And fear that they're all very much like each other, soldiers with a fake persona on top, that's a fear that comes up in Torchwood.
... Ianto responding to all this by blowing up the whole estate suggests possibly 'fear' isnt the only word for it though.
And symbolically what is he trying to blow up?
Not the bit of life that he and Jack carved out, that he was trying to get metaphorical about when their house didnt burn. Except oops, there it goes too.
The bit Ianto said about wanting kids one day is bonus ouch.
As is the implied comparison where the neighbours lose their chances and connections because aliens.
It's got all these meaty character theme parts
but I'm probably going to delete it off my phone for now (with disc and download elsewhere)
because I just dont like it.
The choice to go from deliberate repetitive deception to hungover to slightly vodka drunk just means the characters are off all the time, and not in ways I find fun.
Each to their own.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-30 05:45 am (UTC)