People who claim that bringing Ianto back would “diminish the importance of his death”. His death wasn’t bloody IMPORTANT, he didn’t die gloriously or defeating anybody – his death was a f*cking WASTE and nothing else!!!!!
Is that truly so hard to understand?
i admit i don’t have strong feelings towards that statement one way of the other, though i see it a lot and i see a lot of people getting upset about. personally, i’m sad ianto dies, but for jack to be able to do what was necessary he had to be pushed past the point of not caring and that’s essentially what ianto’s death accomplished.
personally i really liked what they did. from a writer’s point of view, they built up the moment really well. jack had been fighting all of series 3 against admitting to himself and ianto what they were. he’d been doing his level best to push ianto away in order to minimise his own future pain, the awareness of which was probably brought on by the death of tosh and owen, reminding jack of the pointlessness and heartache that follows getting attached.
and then finally, when ianto makes him see that there is nothing jack can do that would make ianto stop loving him, that whatever jack has done or will do, ianto will always be there, when jack, finally, finally realises that yes, this man, this man is everything…that’s when they take him away.
jack taking ianto with him to confront the 456 was jack admitting to both of them that this is something more, that this is something he accepts. so of course, what better time to take it all away again?
i mean yes, it basically puts ianto in the position of the “woman who has to die to further the manpain” but to be fair, it was always, to an extent, meant to be jack’s story. we don’t like to hear this because for many of us ianto was the major reason we loved the show so much, but he was basically a side character. he was the love interest doomed to die a terrible death. it may not have been a significant moment in his life, but it was an incredibly and intensely important moment in jack’s, which, i think, is the point.
having said that, there is nothing in this world that will convince me that ianto doesn’t come back and that he and jack live happily forever after.
…. Yeah you’re probably right :/
*deep sigh*
But that won’t ever stop it from hurting, you know? And when people are just like ‘‘c’mon just let him REST IN PEACE jfc’‘…. WELL.
I understand that he ‘had to’ die from a storytelling POV, sure, but I cannot ever help but feel like he was massively underappreciated. Gwen was – is – the a lead character second only to Jack, and he was just… dispensable, ultimately.
ALTHOUGH – I am quite fond of telling myself that at least, it COULD have turned out significantly worse for him (and Jack) – as far as death (& resurrection & ‘legacy’ & so on) scenes go, his was (/were) really rather good. In the most terrible and heart-wrenching kind of way, surely, but – since you rightfully explained that it was ‘bound to happen’
anyways
and at the very least very important to Jack, I guess it was good for what it was??? 😀
And of course we still have fanfiction & our own imagination in which he does have his very happy forever with Jack, and that is ALL that counts in the end now isn’t it 😉
i think all the characters except gwen were massively underappreciated tbh. (except owen who i despise as a human being but i accept him as a character so i guess that balances out.)
i’ve also noticed, when watching and reading cast interviews, everyone involved in the show seemed to be under the impression that torchwood was, largely, about gwen. and i mean, she was the intended audience surrogate, certainly, but i think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the creators didn’t entirely realise that a lot of us (most of us?) identified with ianto way more than we did with gwen. but i’m not sure if that’s just the impression i get or what, but i always felt that gwen was very much meant to be the main character with jack a close second. as you say, the others were there purely to forward the development of those two. i mean i don’t like it (i am very much not a gwen fan) but i think in terms of what we’re given that’s the closest to the truth, and as such the fact that they’re treated as secondary characters can’t come as much of a surprise.
and like i said, they needed jack in a certain mental space and from a purely tragical romance kind of way, ianto dying was the obvious and best solution. and also, i have to look at it like this: if gwen had died and been the one to push jack to that place, i think i would have been resentful. because for me i want ianto to be the most important person in jack’s life at that moment. i love the fact that he couldn’t say i love you but then goes and damns the whole world. i love the fact that he fought so hard to protect himself against more pain and in the end it finds him anyway. and i don’t want to think that he’d fall apart like that for anyone other than ianto.
and yes of course that’s mawkish claptrap but damn it i expect certain things in my over the top romantic pairings!
… Where do I find you and how do I keep you.
😀
No but seriously, you really just fixed me up about this very well thanks time and time again 🙂 🙂 🙂 I can only wholeheartedly agree with you, on here as well on what you wrote on the threat @janto-owns-my-soul started / continued. It IS very well done from a storytelling point of view, you’ve got to give them that.
With all Torchwood gets into situations they’d be needed and with all the things Torchwood stamps their logo on… would there be Torchwood logo condoms?
I would guarantee that at some point someone got Torchwood condoms made as a practical joke.
Jack swiped the box. Or maybe Owen.
Owen and Gwen conspired and left them on Jack’s desk. Jack thought that it was the funniest thing in the world and asked Ianto if they could use them, which was where Ianto drew the line.
Yes.
I also like to imagine Jack wearing boxers with the logo on it. And Ianto either laughing until it hurt or rolling his eyes.
With all Torchwood gets into situations they’d be needed and with all the things Torchwood stamps their logo on… would there be Torchwood logo condoms?
I would guarantee that at some point someone got Torchwood condoms made as a practical joke.
Jack swiped the box. Or maybe Owen.
Owen and Gwen conspired and left them on Jack’s desk. Jack thought that it was the funniest thing in the world and asked Ianto if they could use them, which was where Ianto drew the line.
Yes.
I also like to imagine Jack wearing boxers with the logo on it. And Ianto either laughing until it hurt or rolling his eyes.
With all Torchwood gets into situations they’d be needed and with all the things Torchwood stamps their logo on… would there be Torchwood logo condoms?
I would guarantee that at some point someone got Torchwood condoms made as a practical joke.
Jack swiped the box. Or maybe Owen.
Owen and Gwen conspired and left them on Jack’s desk. Jack thought that it was the funniest thing in the world and asked Ianto if they could use them, which was where Ianto drew the line.
Merinda and I were talking about this, and after we’d recovered sufficiently from the giggles, she recommended posting it. So here it is.
–
It all started with Ianto’s well-intentioned failure of a Christmas gift for the team. Well, holiday gift, he insisted, as none of them ever really exchanged religious affiliation information. They could all be Jewish, for whatever he knew. Though he assumed Gwen wasn’t, due to the overall Protestant nature of her wedding.
Toshiko jokingly mentioned that they ought to have staff shirts, sometime in September. It was after they’d all become aware of how non-clandestine their little clandestine operation really was. Owen wasn’t the only one to blame for that – he might have ordered the pizza, but there was the bloody big logo on the fenders of the SUV. Plus Jack certainly never hesitated to introduce them by name. By now, if someone came round raving about aliens, Cardiff folk would wave vaguely towards the Plass and tell them to yell at a security camera.
The shirts were right out. Ianto wouldn’t be caught dead in a polo, and he wore tee shirts for the occasional banging about on a Sunday, or to bed. He wasn’t about to give Jack the satisfaction of seeing him in bed in a Torchwood shirt – the man’s ego already had enough power to fill the electrical needs of Splott. Right. Mugs it was. Ianto ordered a crate of them, thinking that all matching mugs at the Hub would give an air of unification to anyone who blundered in.
With all Torchwood gets into situations they’d be needed and with all the things Torchwood stamps their logo on… would there be Torchwood logo condoms?
I would guarantee that at some point someone got Torchwood condoms made as a practical joke.
That certainly seems possible. Ianto might have pitched in, too. After all, he kept a Torchwood brand Cyberman in the basement, right?
It’s canon that Jack went to London with Owen after One fell, I’m pretty sure. I bet he took more then just Torchwood pens (but he probaby took those too). I think Ianto didn’t show up until after they got back.
