I sort of linked to this frivolously like the big n00b I am so I feel like I should at least expand my thoughts: to me Jack reads as gay, maybe because Jack Harkness tends to blur with John Barrowman in my mind. Gwen, on the other hand, comes across in strictly-read canon as straight, but there's something off about that to me. The little Gwen/Cariss bit in the vid came from some thinking I was doing about the actual resonances between their respective characters and situations, resonances that I think could well have resolved into real emotional/physical attraction. There's also something in Susie's crazycakes obsession with Gwen that Gwen reflects back at her in interesting ways (though the whole trying-to-kill-her is probably outlet enough for that particular tension).
So, in short, to me Jack is gay, mostly, and Gwen is straight, but only sometimes, and around all these other entanglements, attractions, and complications is their relationship with each other, which doesn't rule out the other relationships but rather encompasses them.
The WNG trope is having a rocky time on the internet right now, for good and thinky reasons, but I love the note of amor vincet omnia that lies at the center of it. Maybe in a post-heteronormative world (which Torchwood tries to be, not 100% successfully) love would always be an exception, a coup de foudre, the thing that makes all the sense in the world and no sense at all. And I get just the start of that sense from Jack/Gwen: it could be an exception. It could be interesting. It could even be downright subversive. And thus, I am all about it.
That is my Jack/Gwen thesis, by god. I'd be interested in thoughts.
Post-het het!
I sort of linked to this frivolously like the big n00b I am so I feel like I should at least expand my thoughts: to me Jack reads as gay, maybe because Jack Harkness tends to blur with John Barrowman in my mind. Gwen, on the other hand, comes across in strictly-read canon as straight, but there's something off about that to me. The little Gwen/Cariss bit in the vid came from some thinking I was doing about the actual resonances between their respective characters and situations, resonances that I think could well have resolved into real emotional/physical attraction. There's also something in Susie's crazycakes obsession with Gwen that Gwen reflects back at her in interesting ways (though the whole trying-to-kill-her is probably outlet enough for that particular tension).
So, in short, to me Jack is gay, mostly, and Gwen is straight, but only sometimes, and around all these other entanglements, attractions, and complications is their relationship with each other, which doesn't rule out the other relationships but rather encompasses them.
The WNG trope is having a rocky time on the internet right now, for good and thinky reasons, but I love the note of amor vincet omnia that lies at the center of it. Maybe in a post-heteronormative world (which Torchwood tries to be, not 100% successfully) love would always be an exception, a coup de foudre, the thing that makes all the sense in the world and no sense at all. And I get just the start of that sense from Jack/Gwen: it could be an exception. It could be interesting. It could even be downright subversive. And thus, I am all about it.
That is my Jack/Gwen thesis, by god. I'd be interested in thoughts.