How To Write Out Jack the Ripper

[grav_ity]

or, "WTF, Into the Black?"

Reaction post/character meta/ship meta/getting things off my chest before I go on a four day road trip. This kind of expands on my thoughts from this quick post from earlier this afternoon.

Let me open by saying it's probably too late to make me hate John. If "Into the Black" proved anything, it's that attempts to demonize John will only appear half-assed and badly written. At best. And I'm pretty sure "ItB" was not Sanctuary at its best. We've had three whole seasons to reach an understanding with John, three seasons to get used to that overwhelming pity, three seasons to maybe come to love him, just a little bit, and love him in spite of Jack the Ripper. And, frankly, after "FK&C" (not to mention "Vigilante"), it's just not going to work. The tragedy of his character, and that connection to Helen, made again and again in blood, is too well established.

Fortunately, that tragedy might also be your "in", if you're seeking to clear John out of the picture, for whatever reason, and you'd be able to do it without it cost Chris Heyerdahl his job. It would be pretty damn easy for the Elemental to drive him over the edge, and then he could kill himself or goad Helen into killing him (again, for real this time). It would be all tragic and heroic, a fitting end for a man who was good and was horribly twisted, and we'd be sad...but then we'd all move on with our lives, like we did when they killed Ashley. And Clara. And James. They'd just have to make sure to stick to their own canon when they did it. Because "appeasement" is not the same thing as "stronger".

But frankly, I don't know why this is necessary at all. "Into the Black" pulled an incredible bait and switch on the viewers, first by presenting characterization that was completely ridiculous (more from John than from Helen, but Helen got her digs in "Out of the Blue", so I'm counting it), and then having them react to that ridiculousness COMPLETELY IN CHARACTER, Helen by rejecting him outright (again), and John by sacrificing his better nature on her behalf (again). And, you know, the acting was good. So I was focusing on that. The end of the episode, was also really intriguing, so it took me a while before I could really put my finger on the problem.

It's not John. It's not Helen. It's not the time travel. It's not the rumoured love interest.

The problem is this: If you take away John, turning him into the villain for an ill-conceived plot twist, changing everything we've learned about his character since we met him, twisting his relationship with Helen to match a plot instead of the story, all of that just to clear the way for a love interest? Heck, even if there is no love interest (or it hadn't been thought of yet), that's still a idea. Because in doing these things, YOU ARE ERASING HELEN MAGNUS.

And you know what? It's not any more romantic coming from the writers than it is coming from John. It's not even a little bit romantic. It's a cheap trick, one utilized by the worst fanfic writers to shoe-horn their OTPs down other people's throats. My feelings for Helen/Will are well known, it's true, but I loved missparker's "About Memory", and the tag ceilidh wrote for Carentan made me cry. I believed them. I do not believe "Into the Black".

Jack the Ripper, or even the John we met in the webisodes, would make a great nemesis. But John Druitt, the one we've watched develop, cannot be so easily villainized. It is simply not in his character. It's totally in character for John to be dumb enough to fall for Adam's ploy (well, it's frustrating because he was, at the time, COVERED IN THE BLOOD OF THE PEOPLE ADAM SENT TO KILL HIM, but I'm willing to handwave it because John Druitt never met a grand gesture he didn't want to try), but if you wanted me to believe John would ever think of changing Helen Magnus, the woman he fell in love with because she was a doctor and a thinker and ahead of her time, than you needed to do more than give me one line in "Vigilante" that might suggest, if you squint at it funny in the right shade of moonlight, that John's driving force for season three has been "Please, can you just die so that I can die too?"

Helen Magnus hasn't spent a century pining for John. She's moved on. Hell, she moved on with his best friend/ex. She's got that guy in Germany. And, I hope, a bunch of others. And they love her. And she loves them. AND SHE LOVES JOHN. That's what makes her so freaking awesome. Her long life is what makes her Helen Magnus, and John is a big part of that life. There is absolutely no reason why you need to negate Helen's previous love-life in order to make her accessible. Frankly, if you can't handle Helen's previous love-life, you probably can't handle Helen Magnus.

Sanctuary has been dogged by sloppy writing and, for the most part, I don't care. I do care, though, if it comes at the expense of Helen Magnus, and that's exactly what this development does. So sure, bring on the Ripper. Kill John. Shove him so far back into the refridgerator that it takes Helen two seasons to find him. But don't screw with your own canon to do it, and don't, just DON'T mess with Helen Magnus.

Comments

[naiad8.livejournal.com]

I do not love John Druitt. I love Christopher Heyerdahl and he does a magnificent job with a complex, difficult character. I understand that this is not the best written show, and I'm amazed at the ability of the amazing actors to make some of the material so compelling. So, I know that the show exists in a world where logic doesn't always hold, but I still cannot for a moment forget the actions of the true Jack the Ripper. These crimes are so incredibly misogynistic and hateful of the existence of women that I unfortunately can believe that in desperation, when the darkness is so close, when the man is covered in blood and the woman he loves may or may not be saved from a gruesome death and yet she did not turn to him for comfort as she lay dying, with all of that I can believe that John/Jack might want to try to rewrite everything, believing that he, as a man, knows better than Helen want she truly wants. I don't think he can ever accept that the Sanctuary is more important, and always has been more important, to Helen than any lover.
I do think that they could have done it in a much better way, and I hope they don't screw everything to hell and gone early in Season 4 and kick out a brilliant character because they aren't smart enough to know what to do with the gold they have, but I have to admit that I can believe that John would pull something stupid. At the last moment, he might give up, he might pull back, but the temptation would certainly be there.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I suppose the difference between you and me (and this may be because I watched the first two and a half seasons of the show in a week), is that I view John Druitt and Jack the Ripper as two different characters. Jack I have no sympathy for at all. John, however, pulls a little bit at my heart strings. While I do think that John selects who gets murdered, I also think that Jack forces him to pick, and that's his tragedy: he has to pick who dies, and the only person he can't pick is himself (because Jack won't let him).

So yes: Jack the Ripper is bad. And I'd be okay if he died, even if that cost us John, but I also need it to be a tragedy that John is dead.

(I think too that, in his heart, John knows that Helen is always work first. He did fall in love with her in the first place, after all, and was seemingly okay with living in her shadow even in the Victorian era. I don't think you get to be friends with Helen Magnus unless you understand that about her, and I think all of John, James, Nikola and Nigel did...and that's why she let them in.)