Zurich, Tuesday evening

[rm]

I got a bit lost coming back to the hotel from the office tonight, but might sense of direction was good enough that I solved it on my own. The streets here are a bit like the West Village in NYC -- you think you're walking one way, and you're not. You can navigate by the church steeples (the way we used to with the WTC) if you can tell them apart. I just followed the various trolly lines.

Tonight's supermarket adventure involves getting little sacks of marzipan fruit super cheap, and trying to figure out my size and color in pantyhose here. I really should wear dresses for the conference days, even as I feel less dressed up in them and the whole thing is conflict-y in my head. So now I'm running a bath so I can shave my legs.

The hotel we're in is weird -- business, students with a bit of a budget, folks just checking in for the night for various more obvious than they think reasons (hello gay guy in elevator with toy bag!).

I'm still all about Waters of Mars, and it led to a wide-ranging "is anyone watching the show I think I'm watching" email exchange earlier today, that basically boiled down to: Sometimes death is an act of hope. That's right, I like the Whoniverse for all the shit people find bleak, not because I like bleak stuff, but because I just don't find it bleak. Or something. It makes me feel a bit as if I'm on another planet sometimes (although that could just be Zurich). So, I'm like this close to putting it on a t-shirt to wear at Gally should I ever not be cosplaying. Because seriously? Adelaide Brooke? Ianto Jones? Harriet Jones? Beth? All acts of hope, regardless of lack of planning, individual tragedy, or writerly issues. But then, I'm really interested in the whole life/death/memory/heroism equation that the Whoniverse has going on because of Jack's not dying problem and the Doctor's regeneration thing.

Okay. Bath. Work. Writing. Sleep.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying it was necessarily well-executed form a production standpoint nor can I say it was any sort of good plan from the perspective of Team Torchwood, but I do feel Ianto's agency as a character is generally ignored in discussion of this.

He knew what he was getting into and he wanted to be there. He made a choice to fight, even if that choice was more futile than he could have imagined (although, also arguably not -- where is where the writing does get called into question, because it's highly debatable how clear the show was able to make it that Jack's actions in Day 5 (a subject for many other debates as well) were only possible because of Ianto's death, which is what RTD has argued).

In my perception of Ianto's sense of self-narrative, he damn well knew he might probably die (that phone call to his sister!) and thought that death would be in service to a good beyond himself. So much of Torchwood's narrative is about people who view themselves already dead and about selfishness -- it comes up with Jack over and over, it comes up with Suzy and Owen and Tosh, it comes up with Ianto living on borrowed time post-Canary Wharf and post-Lisa (the only person on the show it doesn't come up with is Gwen, which emphasizes her place in Jack's self-narrative and may explain some of the fandom Gwen-hate beyond writing issues and misogyny).

I thought Ianto's choices were very in keeping with the themes of the show and the character's complete blind spot when it comes to self-preservation in the face of his relationships. We, from the outside, might not have cause or be okay with or satisfied in his death, and let me tell you, I wasn't happy about it (I am still sad, in ways I don't talk about, because it means I get to keep having this discussion) but I really, really thought he got a good death, one the character himself would have been proud of.

For me as an audience member after coming through the Harry Potter fandom in which a character I adored got what I felt was a naratively and emotionally pointless death that just would have irritated him (Snape), the nature of Ianto's death was something I was quite grateful for.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I don't really consider Ianto's agency in this, as I don't think Ianto had any agency in his death. Yes, Ianto chose to go into the room, he chose to shoot at the tank. I don't think he chose to breath in tainted air.

A similar situation would be a solider going off to war, and then being electrocuted in the shower by shoddy wiring.