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WNSWJLEO
1) "we're not straight we just love each other" was brought up (by me) in this here comments thread,
2) I sort of frivolously posted that link in a very interesting conversation about WNG in Buffy femslash
3) And then my link tracker indicated that people were actually clicking through, and I went "there's not really content in those comments!" and felt bad.
4) I wrote a more extensive comment on the thread, it was tl;dr and spoilery, and I thought to myself, self, maybe that had better be a post of its own too.
Here's the thing: to me, Jack reads as mostly gay, maybe because Jack Harkness tends to blur with John Barrowman in my mind. From the Jack/Owen eyefucking in 1x02 all the way through Captain Jack Harkness and the glorious Ianto hug, the character /actor pings mostly on men. But there have been exceptions: Estelle, Rose sorta kinda. 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 my recent vid came from some thinking I was doing about the 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 the cliche. 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.
Plenty of Torchwood spoilers, of course.
2) I sort of frivolously posted that link in a very interesting conversation about WNG in Buffy femslash
3) And then my link tracker indicated that people were actually clicking through, and I went "there's not really content in those comments!" and felt bad.
4) I wrote a more extensive comment on the thread, it was tl;dr and spoilery, and I thought to myself, self, maybe that had better be a post of its own too.
Here's the thing: to me, Jack reads as mostly gay, maybe because Jack Harkness tends to blur with John Barrowman in my mind. From the Jack/Owen eyefucking in 1x02 all the way through Captain Jack Harkness and the glorious Ianto hug, the character /actor pings mostly on men. But there have been exceptions: Estelle, Rose sorta kinda. 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 my recent vid came from some thinking I was doing about the 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 the cliche. 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.
Plenty of Torchwood spoilers, of course.