Dear Torchwood Fandom,

[rm]

Dear Torchwood Fandom,

I am as much about Jack/Ianto as many of the rest of you, BUT, perhaps you have not noticed, these are two really fucked up people in fucked up circumstances with a distinctive disinclination towards monogamy.

So, can we please stop writing fics that involve Jack cooing over how adorable Ianto is? or making him breakfast in bed? Or saying "I love you" every two seconds?

BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THOSE GUYS. Even in happy ending fics (which I like), even when they are taking comfort from each other (which is probably how it evolved out of Ianto trying to get Lisa into the Hub) and even when they're in love with each other (which I can totally buy).

Ianto is both weirdly innocent and incredibly fucking devious and generally pretty at sea and FILLED WITH TRAUMA and also tough as nails. And Jack is actually out of his goddamn mind. And immortal (more or less). And a huge slut. And a very manly man. Mostly. And also, FILLED WITH TRAUMA, and I don't mean screaming girl trauma for either of them, okay?

So, please, pelase, please, people, let these characters be into each other on their own terms, not your unimaginative heteronormative romance novel crap.

Also, didn't we learn anything about sickeningly cute and character inappropriate nicknames from the Harry Potter fandom?

Thank you.

Gah. I hate new fandoms.

Comments

[triestine.livejournal.com]

Arrived via metafandom; hello!

So, can we please stop writing fics that involve Jack cooing over how adorable Ianto is?

Sorry for butting in from outside of the Torchwood fandom, but isn't writing characters the way they are not in the original one of the points of fanfiction? What I'm thinking is, original het canon : slashfic ≈ original queer canon : heteronormative slashfic. This kind of subversion does end up in writing characters back into cliches they worked hard to escape, but it's still the same mechanism.

via metafandom

[boosette.livejournal.com]

isn't writing characters the way they are not in the original one of the points of fanfiction?

It can be, but more often than not I've found that it's just pain out of character - there's a long road between Canon Point A and Fanfic Point Q, and it's frequently the stories where Points B through P are absent that can be really irritating.

(I'm not in Torchwood myself either.)

[truwest.livejournal.com]

Hi, I dropped by from metafandom too....

Per your comment -- well, yes and no, IMO.

There was a discussion at this year's Escapade slash con, where people debated the whole thing of (canon) characters in fanfic. For most people, the essential point was to keep the core of the character intact -- for the character to be recognizable as that specific character -- regardless of how far-fetched the storyline was (crackfic etc).

of course different people can disagree on what the "core" of a specific character is...but there are things that are usually considered (by most fans) obvious basic character traits as evidenced by the source material.

Of course, Escapade being a slash con, almost nobody in the discussion, thought that exclusive heterosexuality was a "core" characteristic that shouldn't be messed with...as compared to something like courage, cowardice, sense of humor, aloofness, etc.

Partly because it's hard to prove a negative, where sexuality is concerned...sex is (for some/many people, in some/many situations) a private behavior, it's often impossible to be absolutely certain what a specific person's sexual behaviors and complete sexual history are.

So many characters that are in canon sexually straight/het (or, sexual alignment undeclared) can pretty easily be written in fanfic as being (secretly or quietly) gay or bi or whatever.

Versus, for example, a character that's shown consistently in canon to be a loudmouth, and then they get written in a fic as being tongue-tied and shy -- that interpretation of the character wouldn't ring true compared to their known canon behavior.