Is there aTorchwood/Firefly Parallel With Jack and Ianto?

[crabby_lioness]

 Leaving out any sexual interest for the moment, am I the only one who thinks the Jack/Ianto/Lisa relationship looks an awful lot like the Mal/Simon/River relationship in the first episodes of Firefly?

Simon has lied, cheated, and sacrificed everything out of love for the damaged and very dangerous River. Mal is apalled that Simon has brought this danger into his ship and upon their heads, but at the same time he can't help respecting Simon for everything that he's accomplished and for the fact that he was motivated by love and loyalty, so he goes out of his way to give Simon a break.

The difference, of course, is that Simon is so patronizingly clueless about most things I have the urge to slap him upside the head every hour on the hour and twice at meals and bedtime; whereas Ianto I just want to cuddle.

Comments

[drho.livejournal.com]

And then Mal and Simon snuck away with a stop watch to snog?

I missed that episode! :)

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

You missed the "leaving out any sexual interest line".

Mind you, that would have made for a better episode than some they filmed. Firefly suffered terribly from predictability.

[drho.livejournal.com]

Right. . . Mal and Simon only snog when I look away from the screen. :)

[sunnyrea.livejournal.com]

It's true

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

That appears to be a popular opinion among Browncoats. :)

[vae]

And for good reason. OMGTTS.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

The problem with Ianto acting secretive at the beginning is the same problem with dropping hints that Lisa was evil at the beginning. It would have made it less believable that Ianto could get so far.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

My reaction was, "OH SHIT! I know exactly what kind of fuckery this is! The kind with the unhappy ending, because if there was anything remotely resembling a happy ending going down, this would be a DW story instead of a TW story."

We didn't really get to see much between Ianto and Lisa, and she was supposed to be drugged out of her gourd anyway. But in general I do like the characters much better on TW than on Firefly.

[sunnyrea.livejournal.com]

And, as much as I love my mad as pants cast at TW, Sean Maher is a FANTABULOUS actor and he and Summer had some wicked chemistry that, I'm sorry, Ianto and Lisa just did not have.

But to make up for that, I think there is some fabulous chemistry on TW (Gwen/Owen, for example) that Firefly did not have (Simon/Kaylee).


That is completely spot on! Though I dislike the Gwen/Owen they did do a good 'hide it and be rough' thing while I think Simon/Kaylee was just forced.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Simon/Kaylee felt like an affair of convenience between two lonely and somewhat clueless young people.

[louiex.livejournal.com]

All of this aside from the even visual similarities between them :D The sexy space cowboy and the suit wearing, secretly bearing prior traumas, professional that has just been added to his well oiled team of misfits~

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

LOL There is that! And of course both space cowboys are combat veterans who have their own prior traumas in spades.

[joulez217.livejournal.com]

It is very very similar, although different in the same respect. I noticed it but then I watch Firefly way too much it's not healthy! You are right of course, Simon is so clueless, and Ianto isn't!!!

But I notice it!!!

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I love Whedon's background worlds to pieces, but I find his plots only marginally more interesting than Chris Carter's.

[joulez217.livejournal.com]

I think Whedon went on to just trying to entertain instead of having relly well thought out plots though. Not sure who you mean by the way?? Chris Carter??

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

X-Files. It got to the point where I knew how an X-Files story would end before the opening credits rolled. With Firefly it usually took a whole 20 minutes.

[joulez217.livejournal.com]

Ah right never watched X Files to be honest! Yeah, I know what you mean, about being able to figure out what they were on about after so little time had passed.

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

A TW/Firefly parallel between Mal/Simon/River & Jack/Ianto/Lisa...

Can alway rely on you, noble Lioness, to notice patterns no one else has. & yeah, now that you mention it, there *are* remarkable similarities.

& you may want to cuddle Ianto--& I am not immune to the allure--but while I might not want to pop him one, I do sometimes have the urge to shake him by the shoulders & yell, "You were at Canary Wharf; you work for TW, boy, get a clue!"

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

There were almost 900 other people at Canary Wharf, so I imagine that sheltered him a bit. But I only have the urge to do that to him in Cyberwoman and Countrycide. I have the urge to do that to Gwen all the time.

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

A bit, but it was still TW, & even if he was only like a clerk who works at a military base, he must have known, even if only intellectually, TW deals with weird & sometimes dangerous stuff--I mean, they apparently had armed soldiers right there, ready to go into action at a moment's notice. Even if Ianto was only there briefly, the presence of soldiers should have given him a glimmer. I do agree, though, that it was mostly "Cyberwoman" & "Countrycide" where he was so aggravatingly naive.

As for Gwen--oh, God, Gwen! (Clutches hair in dismay.) I don't know WHAT the writers were thinking, the first time we saw her she was presented as a clever, feisty cop experienced enough she took murder scenes & wrestling drunken yobbos twice her size in her stride, next thing you know she was wringing her hands & rolling her eyes like a particularly silly 13-year-old. Now *there's* a character I want to smack upside the head every hour on the hour.

[boji.livejournal.com]

I think it works superficially, but when Simon brought River aboard - the moment the crate was opened - that scene as shown was damn shocking and it was obvious that Simon was desperate and that his whole focus was helping River. If we'd seen Ianto smuggle Lisa (cyber-crib and all) into the hub I might feel the same way. As it is I felt for Simon (for how trapped he was in/by his social upbringing and his patriarchal, distant father and how lost he was having fallen off the edge of the known world - being on the rim) in ways that I have never felt for Ianto.

That said I think Firefly had some of the strongest writing I've ever seen in TV in terms of the solidity of each episode and to my mind TW isn't there yet. There were large sections of S1 that felt half-baked to me.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I got the desperation and the single-minded focus from Ianto, and I respected him than Simon more for hiding it better from the Team.

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

Well, Mal and Jack are the only guys I know who can makes braces/suspenders look like really cool spacewear!!

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

There is that! :D

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

I'm actually writing a cross-over fic where Jack runs across Serenity and her crew.

[maja-carlisle.livejournal.com]

Oh that makes sense... I adore both, Ianto and Simon, and Mal and Jack are just hawt.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

No argument there. :)

[ru-salki99.livejournal.com]

As a browncoat myself (I have the t-shirt and everything) I have to admit that I'm not that huge a fan of simon (although he does have some great one-liners) and I'm actually a mal/jayne shipper. A huge one infact. I just can't get my head round the whole 'simon is sexy' thing. But I think that's probably because in real life i do tend to go for big hairy men rather than the pretty boys.

Anyway, I've been thinking about writing a corssover for a while, but I'm afraid there would be no mal/simon in it. the pairings would probably be mal/jayne, jack/ianto.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the only male I really like on that ship is Book, and my only ships are the married couple and Kaylee/Inara friendship. I find the rest interesting but not really appealing. YMMV

[ru-salki99.livejournal.com]

Not even Wash and Zoe? How can you not love them? Although the "special hell" line is probably my favourite.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Wash/Zoe is my only Firefly ship.

[vae]

I can see a lot of parallels between Mal and Jack, and between Simon and Ianto, but I really, really don't see the Lisa and River. The circumstances are so different. So very different.

I could waffle about it for a long time because I deeply love both shows (though I think Firefly was better, more cohesive and clearer all round) but I'd bore everyone *g* so I'll just say - superficially it's similar, but when you look at character motivations and history and background, it's very different indeed.

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

Both River and Lisa were turned into killing machines against their will by Big Scary Bad Guys. That's enough similarity for me.

[lizz-112.livejournal.com]

Yes, I see from where you are coming...

But now I want the Mal/Simon sexual interest (but obviously NOT the Simon/River one.....ew)

[crabby-lioness.livejournal.com]

I'm told that want is rampant among Firefly fangirls.

[lizz-112.livejournal.com]

Me?
Fangirl.....

Never

*chuckle*

Okay, maybe slightly.


:D