#I'm like in a fucking toxic yaoi relationship with this server

[viceduo]

not to post a long ass multi paragraph thing when this post is already so fucking long and boo hoo woe is me right whatever. this is like a breakup text of sorts so strap in. but like i said i feel beyond disillusioned with everything, i honestly don't even want to see fanworks or really anything anymore. still love my mutuals/friends, you're all funny, brilliant, and so fucking talented. you're what made the dsmp good. and i don't plan on unfollowing people, just filtering shit, but it doesn't make me happy like it used to and hasn't for a while now.

like who knows if i'm just being a drama king, sometimes i am, but i don't think i've ever really felt this fed up with the dsmp. i'm fed up with the "drama" of it all, that doesn't even feel like "drama" or "discourse" or a "situation" anymore, not when minors being exposed to sexual shit is involved among the countless other things over the last few years.

there have been a lot of jokes in the last day or so, from me included, cause quoting a tag i got, "if you don't laugh about it, you'll cry", but it doesn't feel fun to me anymore, i don't want to joke about it, i don't want to post about it. i don't blame anyone for doing so, it's just how i personally feel about everything. It all feels sad and warped beyond recognition. maybe this is a weird final straw to have, idk, but yeah. i want to focus on things that make me happy, that don't make me doomscroll for hours on end, give me a pit in my stomach, make me wake up nauseous, etc. the bad outweighs the good for me

i dont regret my time spent in the trenches, this interest and passion carried me through the shittiest years or my life. i'm very thankful for all the amazing friends i've made through the dsmp. my closest and best friends have been made through it. i'm thankful for all the laughs and everything, but i don't want to think about it anymore. i'll always have love for what it used to be, and what the characters used to mean, but i need to move on. as a wise woman once said fetch the bolt cutters i've been in here too long

this is all just so fucking sad

[jakowskis]

sloppy gay ramble about why i ship owento lets go

(this was meant to be a server ramble but it got too big for discord so here’s a ginormous messily formatted semi stream-of-consciousness type essay on why i ship owen x ianto and what’s compelling about it to me. starts out kinda babbly n then i got serious abt it n then i got babbly again so sorry for the tone switch fhsdjkfd. i do not know if this is cohesive, let alone persuasive, i'm not trying to sell you the ship so much as im yapping incoherently about the Themes n Motifs that drive me mad. but yeah. also this is purely based on the first two seasons of the show, nothing else. im not normal about these guys btw im Deranged. anyway here.)

for starters, background. i must explain what first roped me into this pairing. the answer? season 1 episode 12. singlehandedly. and then i felt Haunted for a while, and then i read some fic and something clicked in my head and it's been my torchwood otp since. im very consistently an enemies/rivals to lovers enjoyer so at first i was just like 'heh nice i love toxic yaoi' but then they decided not to leave me alone. and a lot of it's bc of the Themes 🫵 do not underestimate my ability to overthink and overcomplicate a barely-there relationship whose connotations are entirely subtextual

see, owen and ianto are mirrors in like ten ways, and where they're not mirrors, they’re foils. on the mirror end, their backstories are jarringly similar (abusive parental figure; rebellious phase as a youth (punk vs goth); losing their fiancée/serious girlfriend as a young adult to an alien threat). their relationships with jack are adjacent (emotionally unavailable authority figure they look to for approval; owen as jack's second in command versus ianto as his right hand man). most interestingly, imo, is their personalities. at their core, theyre not entirely different. owen in his backstory? he's a lot like ianto. faithful, loyal, quiet, gentle. they're not markedly different in who they are deep down, they just have extremely different coping mechanisms that make them look like opposites. ianto dissociates + turns things inward - owen self-destructs AND lashes out. owen's like a ianto that hardened and got mean - ianto's like an owen who still values being quiet and dutiful and not making trouble. (basically, history + personality-wise they’re mirrors, coping mechanism + temperament-wise, they’re foils. two sides of the same coinnnnn)

they both recognize this, although possibly not consciously - and it bothers them. ianto dislikes + feels threatened by / wary of owen's impulsivity and aggression (partly bc he fears he himself is like that deep down, and he isnt willing to access that part of himself. we see a handful of times that ianto does in fact have repressed anger and its SCARY. and i wouldnt doubt hes intimidated by that part of himself, given his control issues. esp considering his plot in adam, if you wanna read it that way). meanwhile owen dislikes ianto for what he perceives as subservience + weakness (partly bc those are things he sees in himself and HATES. a lot of owen's character is his struggles w his own nature + feeling a need to compensate for perceived deficiencies). and they also look down on each other for these qualities, and, i think, bolster themselves a little bit by comparing themselves to the other. we know owen does this (“it’s like you finally won.” “i didn’t know we were in competition.”), but considering ianto’s preoccupation with competency, i don’t doubt he also feels a little bit better about himself when owen fucks things up by acting rashly.

so ianto's like a version of owen that he tried to bury entirely and move on from when katie died, and owen's reminiscent of what ianto's afraid he's capable of becoming. and they both project these things onto each other - owen more outwardly, in the way he feels the need to attack ianto in both of their significant one-on-one scenes. in ianto we see it more as avoidance + slight disgust. in their lighter scenes ('lets all have sex', and the tin tin discussion) we see owen trying to be companionable (...can u call the sleeper scene that fhsdjkf) and ianto having none of it. funny enough, i think owen likes ianto more than ianto likes owen, at least by s2. liking aside, though, ianto does care for him. but another thing i like abt owento is owen's a litttttle bit fixated on ianto for some reason (i think it could be interpreted ten different ways, but him repeatedly bringing up ianto & jack's relationship is wiiiild to me) - n then ianto doesn't think abt owen much at all, he's just sort of there. it's fucking funny. i like a darker take on owento, as u can probs tell, but also they can be hilarious if you want them to be. two guys who can't stand each other and should kiss about it is always good. but yeah, as they exist in canon, as of s2, they're just sort of... comfortably colleagues, albeit maybe still a bit combative.

but i’m eternally caught up in what episode 12 teased me with. (and i knowww ep12 was specific desperate circumstances, that's not their norm, but what's presented when they're both at that point is soo compelling to me. i like characters at their worst.) see, episode 12 is when we really see that half-mirrors half-foils thing come to a head. owen’s spiraling because he just lost diane. he feels weak, he feels powerless. he’s essentially doing what ianto did in episode 4, putting love first, and you can tell owen was kind of disgusted with + felt betrayed by ianto in that ep, so he’s also being a hypocrite and breaking his own standards for how a torchwood agent ought to act. (not to mention i think owen deeply resents his own emotionality, but that’s another topic.) and during that spiral, ofc, he gets mean and frantic, in typical owen fashion. then we have ianto. despite the threat of losing jack, ianto does his best to stay level headed and focus on what their job is, rather than personal feelings - something owen usually values.

so there’s this moment where their traits are both blurring a bit, where roles are being swapped but without straying from the heart of each character, where the mirrors are RLLY reflecting each other (infinity mirror? on and on and on...). owen’s simultaneously being self-destructive and rash, but also vulnerable and love-lorn, which is something he looks down on ianto for in regards to lisa and then jack (and his verbal attack on ianto is majorly projection, too. ‘part time shag’ is especially notable when 1) him and gwen’s affair literally broke off last episode. owen was HER part time shag, and 2) him and diane were meant to be casual too and owen caught feelings - same as ianto with jack. major projection lawl. and we see owen do this multiple times, it’s a trait of his. another notable instance is him telling tosh “you want someone as broken and screwed up as you”, lmao).

and ianto’s being pushed to his limit, too; he’s trying to hold firm and stick to his values about the rules, but it’s the most hardened and merciless we ever see him. when you’re carefully watching, there’s a Brutality in him in a few key moments when he’s pointing that gun at owen and it’s SO critical to my understanding of + enjoyment of the character. i just find ianto’s inner darkness reallyyy compelling haha. my other fav ianto moment is “pray they survive” in meat. there’s something SCARY to him that the show doesn’t often bring out, and it’s what i find most intriguing about him. (both moments are also some of my fav bits of acting from gareth, too. i also think burn’s a much better scene partner for him than barrowman, there’s just something about the way they play off each other in ep12, man. i am… not always impressed by gareth’s acting, but in those scenes i think he’s brilliant.) 

so ep12 introduces the things that my concept of owento heavily revolves around - and then you expand upon it. see, the ship is almost entirely hypothetical. what they Could be - what they have the potential to be. that’s not everyone's thing, especially in a fandom with canon gay relationships, but i loveee it, and i love that there’s tons of freedom in it. it’s also fun as hell + very stimulating as a fanfic writer. other writers have done a lot too, there’s been many fantastic interpretations over the years - there’s a fair amount of rlly rlly good owento fic, particularly by one author back in 2007 who wrote t o n s of amazing stuff + rlly established a great dynamic that most other people have kind of followed (including me). my favorite take on owento (and, imo, the best, and the most plausible, one) is that they hooked up between s1 n s2, while jack was gone. i think its brilliant, i think there's a LOT of rlly insane connotations there + in a show like tw its not far-fetched, like i could see it happening. it's an extension of things we see in canon - for starters, when they’re desperate, they end up in bed with another member of the team. and then the way owen’s always in jack's shadow… gwen wanted jack from the start but she turned to owen instead bc he was there. the idea of that happening again, with a ianto who wants jack but can't have him… owen's consistent trend of being someone's mistake, of being someone’s second choice. his consistent tendency to be there when someone hits rock bottom to offer them a sexual reprieve. because he’s always down there himself, and misery loves company. he doesn’t like being alone in it. (torchwood and its persistent loneliness, btw.) and then there’s the recurrent theme of the power struggle between jack and owen - owen often wants to get one over on jack, which occasionally entails trying to covet the things jack has/wants… rubbing his grubby little hands all over jack’s toys. or maybe that’s just the only way he knows how to establish some claim over torchwood - sleeping with half the members. why not add another? why not give jack the finger a third time? i love drama 🕺

and on ianto’s end… for starters, owen’s a lot like jack in certain ways. a lot of it seems to be a front he puts on (and i wont get into the intriguing implications of owen choosing to or perhaps subconsciously emulating jack in certain respects when he started fresh at torchwood) - if ianto’s kind of like owen was, jack’s kind of like what he’s trying to be, he just doesn’t pull it off as well. not quite as good at being superficially charming. pulls it off in his own way, though. point is, despite the fact that canon implies ianto has zero interest in owen, some of the things he’s intrigued by with jack are in fact present in owen. the inaccessibility, the compensatory arrogance, the brooding, the intensity. this is arguably further present in gwen’s attraction to the both of them. there’s some surface level similarities that canon even seems to reflect on a few times (esp in s2). additionally, i don’t tend to think owen was in charge while jack was gone (i think he stepped back and let gwen do it, but maybe took charge during field missions, as implied by kkbb), but it’s an interesting angle in some owento fics, ianto gravitating towards whoever’s the boss. more than that, though, after losing lisa AND jack, he’d probably end up looking for someone else to preoccupy himself with, against his better judgement. a trait owen and him have in common, it just manifests in different ways. (and, finally, i think he'd also be compelled by the differences between jack and owen. owen's a complicated guy, but i think ianto understands him well enough. there's not really a mystery, he doesn't have to guess with him. owen straight-forward and a bit of an open book, and i think ianto might find that a relief.)

the other thing that compels me, and that i think would compel ianto, is that, oddly enough, owen's someone ianto ends up having power over pretty easily (although not without a fight). this is a sharp contrast to jack, where jack's always the dominating force (i dont mean that perversely, i mean, like, he's all-consuming), and ianto's always kind of at his mercy. a really interesting part of episode 12 is that neither of them, owen or ianto, really win, and yet they both score a victory over the other in different ways, too. owen successfully opens the rift; but ianto prevents him from doing so for quite a while, and does in fact shoot him over it. owen may have succeeded, but ianto established physical dominance by putting a bullet in him. which, cough. that in itself. and not to get additionally horny with it cuz thats not what this is about, but there’s this other really interesting bit in the episode that haunts me, as well: when ianto tells owen to go home, owen sneers at him and refuses, and then ianto stares him down - and owen caves. he’s still sneering, but he caves without fuss. that right there… is the crux of what i find so enthralling. owen, for all his rebelliousness + pride, does briefly bend to ianto’s will. but he does it in such an almost back-handed way, he twists it, almost like ‘you forced my hand, happy now?’ even though… ianto didn’t try hard in that moment to coerce him. owen gave in on his own free will, but had to feel like he’d been made to, and tried to twist it to take some of the ‘satisfaction’ away from ianto (even though it’s not about winning and losing to ianto, at least consciously)… the mind games u guys!!!

and on the flip side, the way ianto was able to come out on top (NO EUPHEMISM INTENDED I PROMMYYYY) simply by standing firm. not raising his voice, not being physically aggressive. he stood there and looked at him. thats insaneeeee. and that's a moment of control for him that he doesn't get in his onscreen relationship with jack, or in his career at torchwood. and we see it for just one moment the only time owen & ianto interact in an substantial way. there's so many crazyyy things that could come out of those two falling into something messy, and i think it's really interesting that the power dynamic that's implied by canon puts ianto in a position of power we don't get to see him in in his canon relationship with jack. i want to see more of a ianto who's not just an accessory to jack, who stands on his own two feet, and that ep is honestly the only time in all twenty-six s1 and s2 eps where that happens. he's not only owen's equal in that ep, he fights for control and manages to command things. that? is a ianto i'm endlessly intrigued by. and then there's the fact that this is all right after owen's gay little fight club episode, where we learn that owen's a guy who lovessss mixing homoeroticism with violence. not only that, the power plays and mind games mark and owen play with each other in ep 11 - ep 12 is a direct continuation of that, between ianto and owen. and thats SOOO sexy to me fhdsfjkds.

so we have something angry and visceral and raw - which isn't everyone's cup of tea but its my LIFEBLOOD. they bring out the worst in each other, the aspects of themselves that they dislike. and personally? im always compelled by ships that have that dynamic - but then they both get a bit Addicted to it. i LOVE the thematic theme of surrendering to the worst parts of yourself, and of being drawn in by the ugly parts of someone else. and i think there’d be smth rlly interesting in the form of them each realizing the other’s their mirror, as well. something almost self-punishing, potentially. lil bit psychosexual. i like the thought of owen recognizing that ianto’s more than meets the eye, recognizing that he’s got a sadism to him - i think he could be compelled to draw that out, because that’s already something we see with owen (most explicitly during the whole gwen affair). owen’s someone who wants to find someone as fucked up and lost as he is. we see this with gwen and diane - and we can deduce that's what drew him to suzie. but it should also be noted those relationships were all with women - in the show, as previously mentioned above, owen’s attraction to men is always associated with aggression, with violence. a lot to be said about that, and i have a wip essay on owen’s sexuality in my drafts, but the point is owen’s queerness exists in anger and in power struggles with other men - which makes it obvious to me, given how they're presented in ep12, that him and ianto’s relationship could very, very easily trip over the line into being something More. owen’s turned on by aggression, he’s canonically attracted to ianto - i really dont think it’d take much for him to make a move. particularly if jack were gone. and i could very easily see him ending up looking at ianto and thinking ‘hm. there's something fucked up about him. i bet i can make him worse’. 

and ianto… see, this is where it gets fun, and also where my personal interpretation deviates from most owento writers, because a lot of people write this pairing as very brutal; the ianto in owento fics is usually much harsher than any ianto i’ve seen elsewhere. it’s rarely ooc, bc we see that ianto in the show, just not often, and it’s one of his most interesting forms n i’m fond of him. that being said - i’m personally intrigued by the idea of ianto figuring owen out and realizing that aggression and casual sex isn’t what he really wants after all. owen’s soft, deep down, and there’s a need to be understood and cared for. that’s… kind of ianto’s specialty. and there’s an angle of power there, too. maintaining control in a way that simply being rough could never sufficiently achieve. because i dont tend to ship enemies-to-lovers in a way where the characters aren’t being self-serving and conniving. i like when two characters are exploiting each other and fucking themselves up in the process. that’s my shit. i especially like when it eventually becomes something that almost looks like a really bastardized version of love. all in all i think they just have the potential to bring some crazyyyy shit out of each other

um. theres a lot more i could say but this is already really long and i ran out of steam. basically i think they should have hatesex but then get obsessed with each other and wage psychological warfare on each other👍