such_heights | where do we go from here?

I know, I know - a week ago I didn't expect my journal to still be All Torchwood All The Time either.

The Scream, by

obsessive24
Experimental vidlet. Hi, scars will heal soon.

This is a really exceptional piece of editing, for one thing. And it just feels like this one long, senseless howl, which really says it all.

A Blip In Time by

di_br
Ianto has a few things he needs to say before the end.

This is just really fucking sad. I can't watch it all the way through - god, there's this slight change in the music, and I have to hit pause and go away and do something else for a while - but I like

di_br's stuff a lot and this is very good.

And now that the dust is beginning to settle, the question I am asking myself is where do I go from here, fannishly? And I'm not sure, but I have come to a few conclusions.

Immediately after Day Five had aired, I wanted to run to greener pastures, to move right away from the thing that had hurt me. I don't want to do that now. Certain exceptions aside, which I'll get to in a moment, fandom this weekend has been amazing. You've made me smile, laugh, cry, nod along, and all in all feel so much better. It's made me realise just how attached I really am to this stupid show, and how much I want to stay. I don't want one story to take a universe away from me.

My feelings about Torchwood continues to feel like a break-up, but that doesn't mean I'll never watch again. If there is a series 4, I might watch for Gwen, because I still love her, but it'll be cautious, removed viewing. The way I watched SGA sometimes, or how I approach BSG now. I don't know if I can watch any of Children of Earth again, though. I was so happy, so hopeful with the first three episodes, and I don't know if I can bear that or not when rewatching. We'll see.

There's been a lot of talk just now because James Moran posted stepping back on his blog. Obviously, the behaviour of some fans has been appalling, the line more of a dot in the distance to them. However, much as I do understand his reaction, I feel like part of what he's saying is that even if I do feel hurt by the show, I'm not allowed to blame the writers for it. I actually don't have any interest in probing the intentions of the writers, and all the talk about RTD is/is not self-hating, etc etc etc, is not something I want to be involved in. But it remains the case that the writing hurt me; the writers' choices hurt me. I feel no desire to let them know that, but there it is.

There's also a lot of discussion also about whether or not Ianto's death is an instance of the Bury Your Gays trope. And, well.

I talked earlier in the week about how happy I was to see that relationship being dealt with more directly, more in-depth. It was being built up like that and it was being incorporated so centrally into Ianto's character because they were going to kill him. And the only reason he died was to fuel Jack's angst - he got refrigerated, a queer version of the usual trope where the girlfriend dies for added manpain. Gwen and Rhys survive, Rhiannon and Johnny survive, because they and their children are important, but Ianto is not, a terribly sad character who could be sacrificed along the way. In Day Five, that really got rammed home. What do we know about Ianto? Maybe nothing at all, except that he was gay for Jack and now he's dead.

Of course other characters suffered, of course that's only a part of an overall picture of bleakness that I still wouldn't have enjoyed if he'd survived, or even if it had been an original series. I can rarely stomach things so hopeless. But it's a thing that really stings.

Stupid me, I guess, stupid naive me. This is a show where people like me can save the world, but they can't be happy, and they can't live to see it. And I'm really pretty unhappy about that.

Look,

xtricks said it all much better than me in Bring Out Your Dead.

And I appreciate that other people feel differently about the whole thing for any number of reasons, and I understand and respect that. I am far from The Voice of queer Torchwood fans, nor do I want to be. I'm not expecting everyone to agree with me, but I'm also expecting not to be dismissed out of hand. Don't make me break out a bingo card on this, is all I'm saying.

Okay, that felt good to write. Where do I go from here? I'm looking forward to finding out.

where do we go from here?

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