twincityhacker

I think we've all learned something important from the conversation here about whether Ianto is a Mary-Sue or not.

Firstly, we also learned that you should really agree on terms before you start arguing. Especially since the person who brought the conversation up karokegal was asking "Is Ianto Jones the Self-Insert of Rusty to shag Captain Jack/John Barrowman by character proxy?" not "Does Ianto have an Aura of Smooth that let's him get away with not getting shot over the Lisa incident, and shown to be so much smarter and more awesome than the rest of the team?"

Secondly, I managed to argue both sides of the discussion. Namely, that Ianto does not display the characteristics of a Mary-Sue, but that Rusty is probably shagging characters by proxy even though it's not likely to be Ianto that is avatar. Which is probably the answer that we can all agre to ( she said egotistically ).

Thirdly, that people may watch the same show with their eyes, their brain is putting together the show in different ways. I think fandom_me said it best in another: "We're all watching different shows, and that's okay." All those different points of view makes for a more interesting conversation, and even if you can't agree, you at least make your own arguments more sound.

Lastly and most importantly, that Fundamentalism doesn't work. If people can't agree on the petty differences of this, with the writer alive and us living in a very similar culture, how the hell are we supposed to agree to the One True Reading of texts which are thousands of years old, from culture's we can't really imagine living in today?

I'm merrily clicking along thinking of reincarnation, Buddhism, and the Whoverse, and I'm comparing charecters to various aspects, and I wander to the idea of the bodhisattva.

I get as far as Bo- and then I'm *facepalming*.

Bodhisattvas are beings that put off the end of their reincarnation cycles - constant rebirth is suffering, after all - in order to help others on the way to enlightenment. Of course, the being is supposed to chose do this out of compassion, but I cannot believe that Bad Wolf changed Jack without his consent, even if he doesn't remember it.

Okay, right now it's odd to describe Jack helping people realize there's a greater world. ( Hello, Retcon! ) But at the same time, he's awakening his team to the greater universe. He's not protylizing in the streets, he's aiding those who have already taken steps to realize that they are not alone.

And it takes baby steps to love the entire universe, after all. But he gets there.

This seemingly does not deal with the completely expected Christianity symbolism. Since Buddhism attempts to solve one spiritual problem, Christianity a completely diffrent spiritual problem, I see no problem using both in this context. Especially when the knowledge of one informs the knowledge of another, like the Fransician monk who supplements his theology with Tibetan Buddhism that gave I lecture I went to.