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miss-m-calling · 4 years

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Rare Pairs 2020 letter

Canons requested: American Gods (TV), The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Starred Up, Witchblade (TV), 킹덤 Kingdom (Netflix)

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with.

Without further ado…

Requests:

American Gods (TV)

Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

I ship it. Yes I do. They had me at “gimme-my-coin-dead-wife”-flicks-him-into-wall. The snarky road trip was the best thing I never knew I wanted until it happened, and I adored every second of it, not to mention the upped shippiness in S2. They’re both such assholes and so fascinating, even if they start to mellow toward each other a bit, and all the gods/magic/resurrection stuff swirling around them begs to be explored further. Also I love love love how their dynamic is about equal parts spikiness, pathos, and humor (they’re funny! and the canon doesn’t shy away from putting them in ludicrous situations), and it weaves seamlessly between those three. Plus she’s half his size yet can and does beat him up with literally one finger, and then there’s the angst of he having killed her, feeling really guilty about it, and then bringing her back. And the way that their New Orleans adventure makes clear they have feelings for each other (S1 was more one-sided Sweeney -> Laura) but neither wants to admit it. And and and… yeah, I just love them. Canon-specific DNWs: Sweeney dying/staying dead (at least permanently), Laura as Essie’s reincarnation/descendant or a reincarnation/whatever of Sweeney’s wife from back when he was a king in old Ireland (or a lot of focus on those relationships), either Laura or Sweeney as an inanimate corpse in a smut scenario

My prompts are a combo of prompts I had after I binged S1 and others I added throughout S2. Even if some of this is addressed or hinted at in canon, feel free to diverge – canon divergences and canon-adjacent stories are my jam!

-Please give me either missing scenes from the road trip (if you can work in a divergence, that’s great - for example, I like Salim, but if you want to have him boot Sweeney and Laura to the curb and go off on his own, or Sweeney to boost his taxi before Salim catches them, or whatever else to have those two alone, go for it!), or a divergence from either season (instead of going to Ostara, they go where? to see whom? about getting Laura resurrected. Or things go down differently in New Orleans, or Cairo, or anywhere else) or something about these two post-canon.

-Laura discovers (how? you decide!) that Sweeney gave her back the coin after their accident – whatever happens next, some punching may be involved. (If nothing else, Mama-Ji mentions that the coin is now in Laura’s heart, and we saw Sweeney place it on her ribcage after the accident, whereas it was originally in her gut like she’d swallowed it. Laura might ask herself how the hell it moved.)

-Wednesday’s big war finally comes, and “don’t you dare die on me [again], you asshole” is a line either Sweeney or Laura (or both) might say to each other.

-Laura asked “What does Wednesday have to lose?” and the answer is…? (Yes, give me that sweet poetic justice. One possibility, though not remotely the only one, but as of S2E3 Laura is technically a god-killer...) Or later when she straight-up says she’s going to kill Wednesday, but is warned to bring power with her when she does, how does that work? How else might she damage Wednesday or ruin his plans, just in case she can’t actually kill him?

-At the end of S2, Laura hoists Sweeney’s dead body over her shoulders and strides off, seemingly leaving Cairo, Shadow, and all of it behind. Tell me what happens then – does she use Baron Samedi’s potion to bring him back, and whose is the blood filled with love she uses (does she still bleed? You could get creative here, worldbuilding is also my jam)? Does her/his coin play a part – and how come the coin still “powers” Laura despite Sweeney’s death? Does she bring him back another way, maybe figuring out how to keep herself around and be able to give Sweeney back his coin? Does he come back like she did, more undead than alive, or does his godhead, however depleted, help with that? That still leaves Laura to be fully resurrected too… Or does something completely out of left field happen – surprise me!

-Possible divergences from “Treasure of the Sun”: Sweeney manages to kill Wednesday, and then Laura rolls up, and then…? Or Laura rolls up and makes like Mama-Ji told her – destroys some motherfuckers? Or Sweeney gets killed temporarily but Laura brings him back, or brings herself back, or does something else with the Baron’s potion, and is Sweeney’s blood the one filled with love, or can we interpret voodoo spells in a non-literal way? Or what happens with Gungnir hidden in Sweeney’s hoard? And definitely how do they deal with each other once they meet up in Cairo, given how they parted in New Orleans (I don’t know what hurt more to watch: Laura deflecting at the diner, or Sweeney rambling drunkenly about her when Shadow finds him, or later on telling Shadow with such desperate sincerity to keep her away from Wednesday)?

-Or how about a wild divergence from the last several episodes? Sweeney and Laura manage to settle their differences (ahem, more fucking, on this plane of reality, might help) and don’t part ways before leaving NOLA. Or they roll up in Cairo separately but at the same time, and confront Wednesday together, and neither of them die (or die more, in her case). Or they’re there together when the police nearly raid the house. Or they have Wednesday (the ultimate cause of Laura’s death) and Ibis (a death deity) and Bilquis (a love/death/life deity) on hand, surely they can concoct some kind of resurrection thingamajig for Laura, and if they have to twist some divine arms then so be it. Or or or…?

-Wednesday told that luckless cop that Sweeney had been against the big gods’ war from the start, and while Wednesday lies, what if Sweeney decided much sooner to say to hell with Grimnir and his war and his having Sweeney kill random people? I’m guessing Sweeney too drank three glasses of mead so he can’t back out without dire consequence – but he does have a fierce, dead woman in his corner.

-They go to some as-yet-unnamed old god (feel free to bring in whatever mythology you want) in order to bring Laura back to life. Between Sweeney’s mouth and temper, and Laura’s mouth and temper, it doesn’t go well. Now one or both of them are in big magical trouble with a pissed-off deity and have to get themselves/each other out of it. Speaking of other deities, I really enjoyed their brief canon interactions with Ostara, Anansi, and Mama-Ji, and I’d like to see more of that, especially Ostara’s polite yet over-it attitude, Anansi very obvious over-it attitude and his dramatic flair, or Mama-Ji being one of the few capable of giving Laura pause.

-All the petty, ridiculous ways in which Sweeney’s bad luck manifests itself make me laugh (can’t help it, won’t even try), and I’m down for more variations on that theme.

-Sweeney and Laura fighting together, like they did on Mr. Town’s train of torture. Whether it’s a bar fight of their own making, or the big gods’ war they find themselves embroiled in, or something else entirely.

-Things happen and Laura finds herself in the position to throw Sweeney under the bus but also help/save him, and while he knows it’s only karma (he did kill her way back when), he can still be pissed off about it – how do they navigate this?

-Related to that, the Baron said: “In death is her true love, but she betrays him also.” If that meant Sweeney, or can mean Sweeney in the future (I don’t like destiny-wills-it stories, and they’re definitely not there yet, but they could maybe get there at some future point, and even then It Would Be Complicated), was the betrayal Laura rejecting him after the loa ‘fuck them,’ or is it something that hasn’t happened yet, and if so, what?

-Laura gets fully alive again, but traces of her (un)dead state remain – what are they, how does she cope, what price did she/he/they have to pay for her resurrection, and how does their relationship change? I’d especially be curious how it would work if they’re already a sorta-maybe-item and then she’s alive again and it’s weird in a new way.

-For reasons I’ll leave up to you, Sweeney and Laura have to stay put in a single place for a while and end up essentially cohabiting, regardless of what their relationship is at that point. Take “cohabiting” as literally or as creatively as you want – in any case, I’m sure it will be marvelously disastrous and amazing. If the place they have to stay happens to be NOLA, all the better, I find everything about that city fascinating. Or, if you wanted to use book canon, Laura and Sweeney (rather than Shadow) are the ones who have to spend time living in Lakeside and deal with its creepy Norman Rockwell-ness and with Hinzelmann.

-Slight or major AU from the opening of “The Ways of the Dead”: Laura has hitchhiked with Sweeney instead of going off in a huff with Wednesday, or she otherwise gets to New Orleans sooner, and she and Sweeney tear up the town together. Gimme bar fights, carnival shenanigans, all the food and drink porn, backstage craziness with the Christian rock band (Sweeney seems to have a backstage pass on a lanyard around his neck when Laura finds him)… Maybe they even cross the paths of some loa and it doesn’t get all angsty (for what it’s worth, I think the reason the sex magic didn’t bring Laura back to life was because she couldn’t accept the truth(s) revealed during the astral-plane sex and just ask Sweeney to prick his finger for the potion – instead she defaults straight to “this is all Wednesday’s evil plan” the morning after – not because the loa fucked them over). They were actually getting along nicely in those first couple of scenes in NOLA, only ribbing each other a little while still being their grouchy selves, before they got to Le Coq Noir. I wouldn’t have minded seeing some more of that.

-AU from the end of “The Ways of the Dead”: they still have their big fight (which was amazing as well as painful) or some variation thereof, but they don’t split up. (Maybe the reason is as mundane as Sweeney refusing to get left behind or they have a shared ride out of town, or maybe the more time passes the less Sweeney can afford to be far from his coin – or maybe the coin needs him close by to work at full capacity.) And then what?

-All the old gods hide their true appearance to an extent. A situation arises in which Laura sees Sweeney’s true, or at least old, self (I’m thinking of his surprise!poignant monologue about when he used to be a king, and him in full Celtic warrior mode in the S2 flashbacks). Or Wednesday’s war ends in victory, meaning the old gods again get belief, worship, and sacrifices. How does Laura, the ultimate skeptic even when she’s on the other side of the mirror, react? How does this new knowledge and new reality change her opinion of/attitude to Sweeney? Or to flip that around, if Sweeney were again relevant and believed-in, would that actually change his bad attitude and fix his issues (my guess is it would be complicated)? On that note, Sweeney’s decline from Lugh to king to leprechaun was more sketched in than really explored in canon, ditto I didn’t really get why he couldn’t seem to remember his own history except in snatches (the curse that made him a bird/madman of the woods?) – I’d love to see more about it and his (not) dealing with it, or with a reversal of that decline. Eorann told him long ago to adapt and change with the times – but what does that mean after humpteen centuries in a rut and becoming used to always feeling angry and unappreciated?

-The power of names, since they never use each other’s in canon: for all his “dead wifeing,” there comes a time when Sweeney (has to) call her by her actual name, and that’s a tricky moment for them to navigate. Or, Mad Sweeney is not his actual name, and true names have great magical power and so must be kept secret; Laura discovers or learns his name, from someone else or from himself; what does she do with that knowledge? Or, Sweeney gets to say “cunt” in a situation (sexual or otherwise) where, not only does Laura not peel his lips from his gums, but she finds that she can’t object, even though she knows that he knows that he’s getting away with it.

-So far in canon, it’s pretty clear that Sweeney has a lot of complicated but sincere feelings for Laura. Laura is still pretty focused on Shadow (or rather her idealized vision of Shadow and what their relationship might yet be), whom she seems to equate with her own lost-maybe-to-be-regained life, although that’s starting to change at the end of S2. For one thing, she’s starting to soften toward Sweeney as she realizes he’s doing things for her that are not all about getting his coin back (and her sparring match with Wednesday in “Muninn” as well as Shadow refusing to be called puppy anymore in “Moon Shadow” may finally force her to accept that her relationship with Shadow died alongside her and Robbie on that road in Indiana). Not to mention the shared truth revealed in “The Ways of the Dead” (bullshit was that just Laura’s truth!) and how Laura flips out rather than deal with it and Sweeney can’t spit out that it mattered to him either, or how obviously cut up she is about Sweeney’s death despite refusing to admit it. Tell me the story of how Laura stumbles her way to feeling – and acknowledging that she feels – more complex, maybe kinder or softer, really annoying for her blunt-force-trauma-personality things about Sweeney and about the notion that her dynamic with him is different from the way she tended to use men for her convenience without really letting them in in the past. Also I’m pretty sure that even if they can admit they feel the same – or sorta in the same ballpark – about each other, their relationship would still run on a lot of conflict, and I would so be here for it.

-On that note: in “Munnin” it also becomes clear that Laura has, without realizing it herself, started to rely on Sweeney. The “I trusted you” line made me think, whoa she’s too furious to catch herself doing it but this is huge for Laura, and the fact that she goes off with Wednesday (!) basically because she’s mad at Sweeney because she thinks he’s prioritizing his debt to Wednesday over her… Yeah, I would like to see that explored some more and/or to see Laura and Sweeney get to a point where they trust each other and rely on each other, and know it and accept it, however difficult the getting there and being there may be for them.

-Sweeney has this intense need to see himself as a brave person and someone worthy of the world’s respect – but his past and his long experience as just a leprechaun have chipped away at that. Add the guilt of having been the instrument of Laura’s death and then all the pesky feelings he develops for her, and it’s a lot. Obviously his final actions in S2 are his trying to reclaim that courage and nobility of old (also to spite Wednesday, who’s messed both him and Laura up), but I would love to read about his character development under different circumstances, where Laura is there all the way, as opposed to them parting ways and meeting up again multiple times like in canon.

-And since I’m on the subject of Laura, you know how she’s not actually an abrasive bitch all the time to everyone? And when she is, the people on the receiving end of it sometimes richly deserve it, or very occasionally they push back (ILU, Mama-Ji!), and anyway it’s refreshing to see a female character who defaults to confrontational and doesn’t bother flirting and accommodating others for the sake of social harmony? As much as I enjoy watching her rip into people (ahem, Sweeney), I also love it when she acts differently, like her genuine interest in getting to know Salim and her joy in seeing him again in S2, or her running passive-aggressive battle of wills with Wednesday. Her beginning to feel sympathy for Sweeney and her anger and disappointment when she feels let down by him are a part of that, and I’d love to see all that explored more. Nuance! Give me all the nuance and seeming contradictions in both Laura and Sweeney’s characters!

-Sweeney and Laura get drunk and wake up married. Or some sex and/or blood resurrection spell results in basically an unbreakable marriage bond, whether it also secures resurrection or not. Or marrying the dead keeps them (sorta) alive. Or being married makes it possible for them to share magical/supernatural abilities. They’re both pissed about it, but secretly having to make it work may not be the worst thing that’s ever happened...

-My perfect AG spinoff would basically be Sweeney and Laura tooling around America, looking to get her resurrected (whether they succeed or not is up to you), stealing ever more ridiculous vehicles, arguing/fighting and having those pesky moments where vulnerability and genuineness creep in – and fucking. So yessiree I’d be down for porn, including “it’s technically necrophilia/zombiesex” porn, including a canon-divergent first time, or their second time, or all the later times after they had their first time in NOLA in canon.

-If you wanted to throw in some worldbuilding, maybe something exploring living death. Magical bargains. What kind of favor did Sweeney do for Ostara that would be worth her bringing someone back to life as repayment? What other powers might Sweeney have – or have left from when he was Lugh? How long can a dead wife keep going before she’s “soup”? What other superhuman abilities might dead!Laura have? Can the dead do magic? What even are the rules governing and the limits of different beings’ magical abilities? For example, why can’t Sweeney just take his coin back, or why does Laura gain super-strength as part of her undead package deal? Is the hoard in the same space as the behind-the-scenes accessed through the merry-go-round, or it’s a different place? Why does the coin seem to start to “run down” the longer Laura has it? Why did Wednesday need Laura to kill Argus when he killed Vulcan himself just fine? What happens with Gungnir now it’s in the hoard – can only Sweeney get to it, has it been transformed somehow (it’s now the treasure of the sun), etc.?

If it helps your inspiration, you can find some of my meta and lots of tag-burbling about these two here. I have read the book though I remember it only in bits and pieces, and while I prefer the show characters and the fact that they get thrown together, you can use or riff on book material if you want, though I’d prefer a story that isn’t just a retread of the book. With reference to one of my DNWs, for this canon, describing Laura’s physical decay is totally fine. Also, Shadow/Laura don’t interest me except as a part of Laura’s backstory (so if your story wants to include Laura figuring out or having already figured out that pinning all her hopes on Shadow to make everything right is unrealistic, unfair, and not how it works – by all means, go for it!), and Shadow/Sweeney interest me not at all.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)

Lenny Bruce/Miriam “Midge” Maisel/Susie Myerson

Lenny Bruce/Miriam “Midge” Maisel & Miriam “Midge” Maisel/Susie Myerson

I’m here for Midge’s adventures in the intoxicating, foul-mouthed, and often-frustrating world of comedy, so her dynamic with Susie and Lenny is where it’s at. I just love the interactions between these three, and between every pair combination among them: Midge and Susie bantering and swearing and tits-upping even when they irritate each other, Midge and Lenny bringing the pathos as well as the humor, and Lenny and Susie both being hardened old pros with still a little glimmer of starry eyes. I am good with either V-shaped triad/poly or hey, Susie (whom I absolutely read as gay) might find a way to be good with a full-on triangle… And as much as I like the comedy inherent in the characters, I also love that they’re all three, each in their own way, messed up people and dysfunctional to various degrees. So yeah, I just want Midge to hand the kids over to her parents, ditch Joel once and for all, marry (interpret that as literally or as loosely as you want) both Susie and Lenny, and for the three of them to ride off into the sunset to make comedy history. Canon-specific DNWs: anything above M rating, pairing any two as a / couple with the third as a & hanger-on, and while Lenny can still be his RL messed-up, drugged-up self – albeit the gentler version the show gives us – it would be good if he didn’t kick the bucket a handful of years down the line.

Most of these prompts are from before S3 dropped – feel free to work with canon or diverge however you see fit, I am all caught up now:

-Does Susie manage them both? Does Midge open for Lenny on tour? Does he open for her??? Or they become equal stars on the comedy circuit?

-Maybe Lenny joins Shy Baldwin’s tour, or they run into him while touring Europe or the US, or after Shy fires Midge, Midge and Susie cobble together a Midge-only tour of America and keep crossing Lenny’s own touring path, and they all tool around, and yes I would love as much period detail and geography porn as you can throw at me. And while Lenny and Midge have seen the world, Susie hasn’t – her reaction to different foods, languages, customs, landscapes would be spectacular to witness. Especially if “different” is someplace as close to New York as Jersey or Connecticut, or someplace as far away and different as, say, Japan.

-If they do go to Europe, somehow or other they also tour the Soviet Bloc. Cue culture clashes, getting followed (or thinking they’re being followed) by the secret police, getting hammered on vodka and herring and pickles, and then when they get back to the States, the Feds grill them. It’s all dead serious, and Midge and Lenny refuse to take it as seriously as they should, while Susie is trying but the whole thing is really pissing her off…

-Lenny’s burned out, and Midge is just getting started. This dissonance may or may not find some sort of resolution. One thing’s for sure: Susie has limited patience for both Lenny’s depression and Midge’s need to make everything pretty.

-Instead of going to Joel for a no-way-is-that-closure fling after the Steve Allen Show taping, Midge goes to have a drink or seven with the two people who have, in their own ways, always been there for her and never let her down.

-Midge goes on TV again, this time as the star: longer set, prime time slot, dressing room, the works. She’s dying of nerves. Lenny and Susie coach her through it.

-More radio work to make ends meet in between gigs: hilaribad period ads, hilaribad radio drama, running all over town to be on time, getting paid in all kinds of dubious merch…

-Midge and Susie head out west to make it big and stay with Lenny once they’re in Los Angeles, and it’s marvelous (ha ha) and disastrous in equal measure.

-More of Susie being the hypercompetent manager we saw especially in S3! (And please don’t dwell on her gambling problem, I was not a fan.)

-They all three get drunk, maybe with a hint of sadness if it’s the holidays (you can ignore my DNW about holidays, but please let that be just the background, not the lynchpin of the story) or someone’s birthday, and there’s a bar fight, running from the cops, eating greasy food at ass o’clock, and possibly kissing, not necessarily in that order.

-One or two or all three of them get arrested/have court appearances all over America and have to bail each other out, or find someone to bail them all out, or secure legal counsel – you get the drift. Or all three of them are trying to explain to a single lawyer what happened, talking over each other, the two pros not being able to resist landing zingers and Susie not being far behind, and the lawyer just getting more and more confused.

-They get in trouble some other way – offended patrons, surly management, shitty hotels, tour bus breaks down in the middle of Wyoming – and have to have each other’s backs because no one else will.

-Three-person road trip or tour, and only Susie knows how to drive. So Midge decides to learn, right then and there. And Lenny… Lenny may or may not be too lazy/hungover/lying about not knowing how. There’s supposed to be a rotation so everyone gets to stretch out on the back seat for equal lengths of time, but you know the system doesn’t work too well in practice. Also, they play games in the car to while away the time, and they do it their own way of course: I spy, cows on my side, yellow car, never have I ever, 20 questions, or riffing on whatever’s playing on the radio…

-They sit down to watch the moon landing (you can move it up a bit so it’s not happening a whole decade after S2) – by which I mean, Midge is all gung-ho about the moon landing, and Lenny and Susie are like whatever – and things don’t quite go to plan, but a good time is eventually had by all.

-It’s Yom Kippur again, and Midge wants to do the whole production: synagogue, breaking fast, the lot. Lenny and Susie would rather eat glass. Midge gets her way, of course. Does she decide to bring Susie and Lenny home to meet – or meet properly – her parents??? I bet Abe and Rose’s reactions would be something to see. (This too is an exception to my DNW about holiday settings – I just want stuff to get as crazy as it did the two times we saw Yom Kippur celebrated on the show, and for everything to still somehow turn out relatively OK.)

-Midge and Lenny have cheered each other up when the going got extra rough. I want for Susie to be especially down in the dumps – maybe her boozehound of a mother died and Susie took it worse than she does in canon, maybe some asshole told her she’s a shit manager and got her right in her insecurities – and Midge to rope Lenny into trying to cheer her up. And for Susie to fight them every step of the way but still be glad they care enough to try.

-Inspired by Susie’s brother looking just like her, by which I mean she and he and their sister look nothing alike, and by Lenny’s “she’s my mother” quip about Midge at the TV studio and then his “let me introduce my wife or maybe my sister” in Miami – Midge, Susie, and Lenny pretend to all be blood relatives, or mafiosi, or spies, or something else they’re not, while out in public, say in a restaurant. Just to be assholes and see how long they can keep it going before they break character or people figure them out, or call the cops, or something. There’s totally a bet on who corpses and breaks character first. Or, nice hotels ca. 1960 weren’t very big on letting unmarried couples, let alone threesomes stay in rooms together – pretending to be family might make that easier; forgetting what they’re meant to be to each other, or mixing up their backstories might make it harder. Or they’re just trying to save money by only getting one room, there’s only one free room in the hotel, or any other screwball reason you can invent.

-Lenny and Midge do a (comeback) tour of the Borscht Belt, and all the Steiner Mountain Resort guests (especially the gossipy old hens from the beauty salon) and staff go to see them – and heckle.

-Stuff happens and they end up performing at some hole in the wall place where no one knows who they are (or no one believes it’s really those people they’ve seen on TV) – tough crowd, but a good workout for the two comics, and if Susie gets to threaten to rip off someone’s head, all the better.

-Lenny and Midge honing their routines – and maybe developing a double act – and Susie being all “oh my fucking god, what the fuck!!! … They’re actually good. I’m so proud.”

-Sharing a bed with two other people is an ongoing project: who sleeps (or refuses to sleep) in the middle? Who gets up during the night and why? Who starfishes across most of the bed? Who snores, and how does this get handled? If alcohol or pot have happened, how does that affect the sleeping arrangements? Also, Susie and Lenny witness and react to Midge’s beauty routine, ‘nuff said. Or, for various reasons one person after another ends up decamping to another room/bed/couch, but it doesn’t help them get much sleep or even stay there very long (this is inspired by my love of Shirley Jackson and her short story/humorous essay “The Night We All Had Grippe”).

Starred Up (2013 movie)

Oliver Baumer/Eric Love

Yes I do ship it, I do, I do!

Ahem. Don’t get me wrong, I liked what the movie did with the father-son relationship and its influence on both men’s character development – but I really wish they hadn’t got Oliver out of the action before the story’s climax (not like that!). The final denouement with Love father and Love son was great, as was the hint at the end that Eric learned something in anger-management group and has a support network that will help him a lot. But. I would have wanted to see more of the intriguing dynamic between Eric the intelligent, semi-feral, yet not-incorrigible, young thug and Oliver the educated, dedicated, kind yet aware of his own potential for violence (what was he on about with “I need to be here”?), slightly older counselor. They had me at Oliver’s “I want him” and Eric later telling his father that Oliver’s a better man than Love Sr. Also the not-flirting and the push-pull in the scene when Oliver picks up Eric from his cell - yowza!

For this canon, my dubcon DNW does not apply.

Prompts:

-I would love to see Oliver return to holding his group in prison, so the two of them can interact more, either in the movie’s immediate aftermath or years down the line, as it’s implied that Eric will be serving a long sentence. Give me more scenes from anger management or the ribald, honest, free-flowing conversations in group, either with the other men present (I liked Hassan and Tyrone especially, among the group members) or a one-on-one session.

-An oblique or open-but-undramatic admission/declaration that they both know there’s something there, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Or, one or both of them knows exactly what to do with it, and the push-pull that would result from that.

-Dirty talk: used for arousal, as a defense mechanism, as a form of flirtation. Eric using slurs to assert dominance, and Oliver not letting him hide behind profanity, when he can use colorful language to express emotion and/or sexual interest. There could definitely be some verbal taunting/flirting about who wants/is eager to do what or is good at doing something. There may be some sniping comments about logistics and (lack of) condoms and barebacking and what men get up to in prison. There probably wouldn’t be deep discussions about sexual identity.

-An emergency in the prison requires a lock-down, so Oliver gets temporarily stuck in Eric’s cell or another room with only Eric for company. Things get porny and/or emotional.

-Eric is eventually released (you can handwave this so it happens soon after the movie or have it happen years later) and crashes with Oliver while he adjusts to the outside world. You guessed it: things get porny and/or emotional.

-How do they get to the point where both can cross that line from friends/whatever the hell they are and become, to lovers? (There’s Eric’s personal history and general discomfort with vulnerability, plus all the ways prison sex can be or make things complicated, and if it helps, I headcanon Oliver as either gay or bi and at least somewhat closeted, at work especially.) Who initiates and “directs traffic”? How does their always-contentious dynamic shift during and after sex? Is the sex an isolated (series of) occasion(s), or a progression/escalation over multiple encounters (how would I love especially an escalating series of encounters, let me count the ways)? Eric might seem like the logical initiator and/or dominant partner as well as using the possibility of sex to manipulate and exert control, but then Oliver might (or might not!) surprise him and is definitely the one more in touch with himself as well as aware of his custodial duty toward the men in the group.

-At some point in their intimate relationship (probably not right at the start, and probably not in prison, though if you can make it happen in prison, more power to you!), Oliver decides he’s going to take his sweet time and make Eric fall absolutely apart with pleasure, while using dirty talk to both arouse and empower Eric to own his desires – by that point, Eric is in a place where he can let that happen and enjoy it, even if he still talks tough.

-Role reversal: Oliver as the con (jittery, shut off, sticking out like a sore thumb in prison with all his fancy learning, yet no pushover) and Eric as the newbie counselor (kid from the wrong side of the tracks made good? Youthful hoodlum turned around his life, now trying to help others via tough love and lots of swearing and maybe a bit of manipulation when called for?)

Witchblade (TV) Sara Pezzini/Danny Woo

I used to love this show back in the day, and loved it again in all its hokey gloriousness when I rewatched it recently. Sara figuring things out and being a principled badass, but maybe out of her depth with the Witchblade, and her dynamic with Danny, whether he's a ghost or alive, it’s all catnip to me. Sara is not extremely quippy, she has a job to do dammit! and don’t look at her vulnerable side, just don’t look at it!, and I love that about her (she’s much harsher in S1, after Danny’s death, than in S2); ditto that Danny is somewhat softer than she is, but still can hold his own thanksverymuch (well, when the plot doesn’t require him to get nabbed by bad guys) and has a bit of a deadpan snarker side too. I’d love something that plays around with their canon dynamic from either season, or uses canon as just a starting point. Some of my prompts lean dark or horror-y, so don’t be shy about going there; I’d also enjoy a story in which the Witchblade itself ends up not being very significant (say, they start to investigate a possibly mystical case and then nope, plain murder). Canon-specific DNW: Irons and any version of Nottingham appearing (you can mention them if you need to).

Prompts:

-The Witchblade is more parasitic than symbiotic, and instead of Sara learning to control it, its feeding on Sara affects her more and more over time. Or, the visions and dreams ramp up into full-blown paranoia and/or disassociation. The Witchblade's POV, maybe (it is sentient)? Asking for help is the hardest thing for someone like Sara, but what are (more than) friends for? I’d also enjoy a dubcon scenario (exception to blanket DNW) where Sara really shouldn’t be having sex when her head is all messed up by the Witchblade’s influence, but... well... they do. The Witchblade canonically enjoys violence and bloodshed perpetrated by its wearers, so it stands to reason that it might lower other inhibitions too.

-Witchblade v. mythological monsters. In S1, even with everything else that's going on, Sara absolutely scoffs at the possibility of vampires. So of course I want: Witchblade v. vampires! The scarier and more feral, the better. Or, it's implied that the Witchblade was forged from a meteorite, so it's basically an eldritch artefact from outer space. Yes, please lean all the way into the Lovecraftian tropes! (The moon is turning red, the Old Ones are back, it’s the end of the world as we know it, but Sara’s got her partner by her side.) Or something from Chinese mythology, so Danny can kick extra ass. Or, for a silly take on Chinese culture: Sara and Danny in the world of Big Trouble in Little China, another old fave of mine, the entire plot of which revolves around… a woman with green eyes and an unwanted connection to the supernatural.

-The Witchblade has a reputation for abandoning its wearers just when they need it the most. True to form, it slips off of Sara’s fist, leaving her and Danny to save themselves with good old-fashioned guns, fisticuffs, martial arts, and of course having each other’s back.

-More of the psychedelic-ness in many of Sara’s fight scenes, where now she’s a woman in a leather jacket with a gauntlet on her arm, now she’s a knight in armor! Now her opponent is human, now he’s a wolf-shaped spirit of evil and hatred! Playing around with the characters’ senses and perceptions – yes!

-Instead of seeing only Danny and needing him to play intermediary for Sara to talk to other ghosts, the Witchblade makes Sara see ghosts all over the place, and it's getting to her. Ghost!Danny may or may not help with that. Or, ghost!Danny is basically always around, whether Sara can see him or not. He manifests when Sara is masturbating, and you can't really feel guilty if the ghost of your dead partner whom you’ve always had a thing for helps you out, and anyway you’re probably going crazy and none of this is real, so it doesn’t count anyway... right?

-Case fic/stakeouts and banter. Flirting to pass the long and stressful days at work. Quick and guilty sex because Danny's married. Slow and intense sex if handwave he's not married but “oh noes we’re partners, we shouldn’t be doing this, but somehow we keep doing it anyway.” Hooking up in the car. I've always headcanoned that they had a thing pre-canon which ended for Reasons, but they both kinda wish it hadn't, hence the hand kissing, and the “I can’t even touch you,” and the coffee bringing/stealing, etc. So feel free to play around with that.

-Undercover as married, undercover as a gangster and his moll (LOL at Sara as a moll, or have Sara as the gangster and Danny as her lieutenant/enforcer/arm candy), undercover as “they think we’re fucking, better fake it real good for the people listening in, oops shit got real fast, careful don’t say each other’s real name or you’ll blow your cover.”

-More timey-wimey shenanigans with the Witchblade. Maybe it allows Sara to manipulate time more than once. Maybe she starts doing it way too often, throwing the continuum out of whack (something non-linear would be very interesting). Maybe she and/or Danny remember some or all of what happened in S1. Something about all the multiverse versions of them, possibly splitting off from a dramatic moment. Time loops and feelings are a combustible mix.

-Apart from the super obvious shippiness, what I like about S1 especially is how Sara rolls with the weirdness the Witchblade has brought into her life, instead of reaching for rational explanations. More of that (I can't think of a better way to put it), and double extra brownie points if alive!Danny figures out at least some of what's going on with Sara's bracelet and somehow gets in on the action. Maybe a Danny saves the day divergence? Or how about a loophole that allows a man close to the Witchblade's wearer to wield it temporarily, but There Is a Price to Pay.

킹덤 Kingdom (Netflix)

Prince Lee Chang/Seo-bi

I fell so hard for this show. So hard! The beautiful production values, the wonderful cast, how the characters develop, how the show slowly but surely unfolds one reveal after another and packs so much into two short seasons, all the period detail, the genuinely tense action scenes, the moments of humor and intense emotion, the intertwining of political intrigue and zomg! really scary zombies, how the zombie outbreak works on multiple levels both literal and metaphorical…

I love the brave, kind-hearted, but sheltered prince, whose whole life has been so privileged yet shadowed by the possibility of death if he loses his position as heir, learning what it means to actually rule and lead people, to protect them and be protected by them in turn. And I love Seo-bi the fearless, dedicated, selfless physician, who notices things and figures things out regardless of whether this annoys the people in power. I love how instantly and fiercely loyal she is to him (not just because he’s the crown prince, but because she’s seen how brave and altruistic he can be) and how he immediately takes her advice and experience seriously despite her being a woman and a commoner in this super-hierarchical setting. Also, I love most of the cast (not a huge fan of Chancellor Cho, but he is an effective antagonist), and would be delighted to see any of them in fic too. Especially the loyal and funny and badass Mu-yeong (he was loyal, despite the Haewon Cho clan’s blackmail, and if you want to diverge from canon so he lives, I would not mind that at all), the even more badass and wounded and snarky Yeong-sin (or is that “Yeong-sin”???), Chang’s sparky, exiled uncle several times removed, and the terrifying and frankly unhinged young queen are my favorites. I even have a soft spot for that mostly-useless coward Cho Beom-pal, but really, they’re all great and I would love reading about them too, or just about the prince and the lady physician – whatever works!

Finally, before I get to prompts, I know a bit about the Joseon period, but we’re talking the bits and pieces I remember from a college class, and what I’ve read on Wikipedia and picked up from this and other Korean movies and shows. I know a bit more about some of the cultural background, like the Confucian values, the social stratification and feudal system, the gender segregation among the aristocracy, the wars with Japan, but again – my knowledge is limited. So if you want to teach me stuff about Joseon, go for it! If you want to invent or handwave stuff, as long as it fits the canon’s mood and broad cultural parameters, go for it! And if you want to treat me to some worldbuilding, period detail of any kind, and/or costume porn, definitely go for it. Canon-specific DNW: anything above M rating for sex (violence is fine).

Prompts:

Zombie fighting anything! Learning to survive in a society that’s rapidly breaking down, having to transcend their habitual social roles and challenging each other, anything! Maybe one of them teaches the other to hunt, or to make herbal medicines, or to fight with a sword, or heck, to cook or clean dirty clothes. (FYI I wrote most of these prompts before I was quite done with S2, and the time-skip took me totally by surprise. So while my prompts ignore Chang renouncing the throne, I’d also be down for the untold adventures of the former prince and his traveling companions, as Chang learns how to be just regular folks and they pursue clues about the resurrection flower, or for your take on what happens in S3. Use whatever works for you in my prompts in any way you want!)

Figuring out how the zombie infection continues to evolve and/or working together to find a cure beyond dunking the infected in water – whether that means to destroy large numbers of the undead, or to develop an antidote, or to cure and bring back those afflicted. One plot detail that really struck me: more experimenting with zombies, like Chancellor Cho started to do, might also hold the key to a cure?

Political intrigue anything! Having to fight zombies and/or factions at court with both friends and unexpected allies (not gonna lie, I would have loved to have seen the young queen unleashed on some zombies, even if that did not make her the prince and Seo-bi’s ally).

More road trip/survival/battle goodness – maybe Seo-bi offers Lee Chang some advice while they’re navigating their new situation, or she witnesses him developing his leadership muscles, and it brings them closer together than before. Or maybe a moment of humor, relaxation, or quiet affection on the road or in between zombie-slaying, especially if it catches them both a bit by surprise. Or one of them gets a non-zombifying injury (nothing too gruesome or life-threatening, please!) and the other one has to care for them – extra points if Seo-bi is injured and the prince kind of bumbles through the most basic things so she has to talk him through her own treatment. Or nightmares/being triggered by something, like we saw both Chang and Seo-bi react at the sounds of zombies growling and people screaming in S2E5.

We have seen Seo-bi insist on staying loyal to the prince, and Lee Chang rely on her repeatedly to the exclusion of all his other people – give me a situation in which he has to make clear his own loyalty to her, as a part of both his becoming a better leader and as a step in advancing their relationship. Or, there comes a time when Seo-bi really pushes against the rules of what someone like she can and cannot say or do to/around a crown prince – we’ve seen Lee Chang refuse to stand on his dignity to the point where so many of his interactions with commoners would end in the commoners’ death, but I imagine even he has his limits, and that kind of clash can only drive this dynamic forward!

Canon divergence in which Seo-bi gets sent to the capital and assigned to be the personal physician to the petulant, frustrated prince we meet at the start of the show (handwave the gender segregation and impropriety). She knows her place, but she also does not suffer fools or male nonsense. Sparks fly, social conventions get tested, zombies may or may not happen, and a new mutual understanding is born.

Canon divergence from the scene in S2E2 when Seo-bi finagles her way to being allowed to see the prince and he instructs her to resurrect Ahn Hyeon – what if instead of that, they came up with another plan of escape? Or maybe Lee Chang sending Seo-bi to spy on the queen goes a different way than in canon? And really, anything that requires those two to pass secret messages while grabbing each other’s hands and staring intently into each other’s eyes is A++ with me!

One theme which emerges gradually, and I really loved, is people having to compromise their principles to survive and ensure the safety of those they feel loyal and/or obliged to: Ahn Hyeon agreeing to turn the sick villagers into zombies, dear Mu-yeong having been a spy but also protecting the prince all along, Seo-bi resurrecting Ahn Hyeon, Lee Chang instructing her to do it as well as his thousand-yard-stare after having to finish off what’s left of his father… I’d love to see more such compromises, how their consequences ripple out, and the emotional fallout.

In addition to zombies, other magical and/or supernatural events and creatures start to appear in Joseon. If you want to bring in something from Buddhist mythology or Korean folklore, please do, and any and all worldbuilding would be awesome.

Post-canon something in which Lee Chang is king, possibly of only a part of the country (maybe a zombie-free enclave, or a part he won in a civil war against the Cho clan or a cadet branch of his family), and Seo-bi is there as his advisor, physician, and unofficial chancellor. Gimme policymaking to deal with the lingering zombie issue, and assassination plots, and servants/guards/ladies in waiting gossiping like it’s their real job, and all the palace intrigue!

Kind of related to the previous: even as a “spare” prince, Lee Chang can’t marry a commoner. Would he ever think to offer Seo-bi to become his concubine? I don’t think she’d go for it, and he might realize it, but maybe I’m wrong! Or maybe being intensely platonic/sublimating at each other is as good as it gets for them, and they’re kind of okay with that. Or they get married in secret and have to be very careful not to let slip anything by word on gesture in public, or not to let Seo-bi get pregnant. Or, y’know, one day or night on the road or in a fortified town, in between scavenging for supplies and fighting zombies, they decide to bone just because their lives are weird enough now to forget about propriety and all that jazz for an hour.

Role reversal: Seo-bi is the sheltered, willful princess fearful for her position (especially since she’s a woman as well as the daughter of a concubine only) and Lee Chang is the proper yet willful provincial physician. Do they meet as in canon, or under different circumstances (maybe she must flee the court to escape assassins, accusations of treason, or an arranged marriage, with or without bonus zombies)? How would their dynamic be complicated (and made awesome of course!) by the gender reversal? Also, burning question: does Princess Seo-bi already know how to fight (because she forced Mu-yeong to teach her back at court, of course), or does she have to learn once zombies/brigands/insurrection/whatever happen? And does Physician Lee Chang know one end of a musket or sword from another, or does he need rescuing at some point?

I realize that some of these prompts could work as well (better?) as a no-zombies AU, and that’s fine if you want to take it in that direction. Just so we’re clear. :-)

Likes:

I love pre-canon, canon, post-canon, canon-divergent, and missing-scene stories. I love character-driven and plot-driven stories equally, and I love fics which mix humor and angst/serious business when appropriate for the canon.

I love stories about characters at work and play, group dynamics, family dynamics (including constructed families), professional partnerships, friendships, alliances, rivalries, intimate couples (new lovers/first times as well as long-term/established couples), UST-ridden couples who are not just UST-ridden but connected in other ways too, etc.

I love irony, snark, humor as well as angst arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in, linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories, hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, worldbuilding, competence, spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who can get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

I especially love workplace stories (this can mean anything from an actual workplace/casefic/procedural setting to anything that revolves around the canon world in which the characters live) in which the characters are competent and dedicated to the job, and while they may not be exactly friends and they may well irritate one another, they still manage to rub along to get the job done and maybe even grow to care about one another (much to their surprise and sometimes reluctance/discomfort). Or, if they can’t get along, show me why not and what’s preventing them from finding common ground.

In terms of ship dynamics, I love (where it fits the characters) banter, competitiveness or antagonism shading into attraction (this tension need not be resolved), oh-god-why-did-it-have-to-be-you-what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this, bickering yet loving couples, characters who are serious about their romantic interests, characters who think they are much better at flirtation than they actually are, characters forced to work together only to prove much more compatible than they initially assumed, fics which mix an exploration of characters’ professional and everyday lives with shipping. A dynamic I cannot resist is shipping a couple who are incompatible in some important way (they are ideological enemies, cop and criminal, spies from opposite sides, one betrayed the other or they betrayed each other), and while they love and want each other they’re also not willing to change sides or surrender/compromise their identity for the other’s benefit, and how they might (or not) make their relationship work anyway.

I don’t have any very specific likes for smut, other than smut fitting the characters – show me how their canon dynamics spill over into the bedroom (or other place of congress). I also like sexual scenarios that subvert expectations a little and surprise the characters themselves (e.g., the person who’s usually quiet or more passive taking charge, the more aggressive person goes with it possibly snarking or commenting on it as long as they can). And I like sexual scenarios that contain an element of competition, antagonism, oh-god-this-is-a-bad-idea-but-we’re-going-for-it-hammer-and-tongs, not wanting to admit feelings or show vulnerability except oops it happens anyway, whether the characters acknowledge it or not, or just people getting way more into it or being more affected by it than they thought they would. When it fits the characters and their canon dynamic, you also can’t go wrong with we-both-wanted-this-for-forever-and-now-we-both-know-it-so-here-we-go-diving-in-headfirst. For het and/or slash, oral, vaginal, anal incl. pegging, manual (ifyouknowwhatImean) – it’s all good. You can go as veiled or as explicit as you like, but please avoid excessive medical jargon – I don’t find a lot of mention of “penis” or “clit” sexy.

DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, kinks, incest, underage, genderswap/genderbent characters, xeno, non-/dub-con, torture and abuse (this and non-/dub-con can be mentioned if the story needs it, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it), dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore/blood and come are fine), toilet humor, character bashing, issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons, unrequested ships, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (meaning my requested characters being or staying dead by story’s end - Laura Moon can remain undead), serious illness or injury, pregnancy and children, holiday or wedding setting/theme, secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job, reference to RL current events, 1st/2nd person POV, unrequested crossovers or fusions, AUs which have nothing to do with canon

#dear author letter #rare pairs 2020

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asknightqueendany · 5 years

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So in S4E2 Bran has that vision of a dragon flying over KL. Which suggests that the burning of KL was something they settled on before S4, but they somehow waited until S7 to mention it to Emilia? Or is it that KL was always gonna get torched, it's just Dany's madness which really was a last-minute brainwave from D&D? What do you think? (I know there's been a lot of speculation already about whether the Mad Queen plot was D&D's invention or actually Martin's, but please indulge me.)

A very interesting question anon and I will answer it in parts!

1) Bran’s 4x02 vision of Dragons flying over King’s Landing.

This can be for any number of reasons. There literally are thousands of viable options for why dragons would be flying over King’s Landing aside from what happened in 8x05.

a) We could have had dragons flying triumphantly over the city for “dream of spring” after Dany’s helped won the war.

b) we could have had dragons flying over KL for the second “dance of dragons” between Dany and fAegon - this was S4 remember, based on ASOS, so fAegon could have still been written into future seasons at this point.

c) this could have been Bran having a vision of the past where dragons were still around with the ruling Targaryens

d) this could have been a figurative vision - like Bran’s/(Jojen’s in the books) dream about the “ocean” coming over the walls of Winterfell when really it was Theon, the dragon in his vision could have just symbolized Dany taking the Iron Throne and Targaryen restoration

e) this could have been the dragons flying over KL in 7x07 for the Dragonpit meeting!! - honestly, this is so dumb, we’ve had dragons flying over KL in our story’s timeline, the vision technically already came true in Season 7, Dany in KL in 8x05 was not the first time she and her dragons were in the city so the moment/vision coming “true” is cheapened by the 7x07 moment. Totally hint of the retcon.

So yeah, Bran’s vision in 4x02 means nothing for the future and does not in anyway communicate that D&D “planned Mad Dany from the beginning” or at least as far back as Season 4. No, no, no.

Think of all the shit that got retconned by D&D. Arya’s shutting “blue eyes” forever when D&D only came up with Arya killing the Night King somewhere around Season 6, well after Melisandre had told Arya that line from Season 3.

So Brans’ vision likely was a retcon too just to fit D&D’s fucked up ending.

2) D&D “telling” Emilia.

No. They didn’t tell Emilia shit. They NEVER told Emilia the ending for Dany. She had to find it out via reading the S8 script.

They allegedly gave her “notes” to play scenes differently in previous season(s) but Emilia never says how far back those notes go. D&D could have only been giving her those “notes” in Season 7.

Also, Emilia mentions D&D told her Dany’s story was like “Lawrence of Arabia” - please note anon, I have never seen this film or read about the story so I am unfamiliar with the comparison - but Emilia never says when D&D told her about the LoA thing. They could have also told Emilia this in S7. Emilia mentions that when they told her about the LoA thing, she didn’t connect the dots to MadDany because she cared about Dany so much - which suggests Emilia had already been playing Dany for a significant amount of time when they told her this. So definitely not a Season 1 revelation. Again, could have been as recent as Season 7.

3) As to the planning of the burning of King’s Landing...it’s suggested as far back as Season 2 via Dany’s HOTU vision that KL will be destroyed. That much is true. However, as many of us meta writers have pointed out, the S2 script very clearly says “snow” falling in the throne room, not “ash”. And in 8x05/06 there is no way that that’s snow. It’s very clearly ash. It’s falling from the sky and blanketing everything already at the end of 8x05 when it’s hot and sunny out with not a cloud in sight, and there’s nothing to suggest that the beginning of 8x06 takes place on a different day. It seems to be later that same day, after the “battle.” So it’s ash, not snow.

As people have pointed out however, the destroyed throne room in 2x10 is destroyed from above, suggesting dragonfire, not wildfire.

But this can be easily explained: the Night King got his hands on a dragon, didn’t he? And if snow is falling, it’s the middle of winter, the season during which the AOTD and White Walkers finally make it south of the Wall.

The NK with an undead dragon destroying the city of KL, therefore leading to “snow” falling in a busted up throne room makes way more sense than “snow” being changed to “ash” and the heroine of the story going on a murderous rampage when she’s previously never harmed innocents before. Right?

8x05 and 8x06 were all retcons anon.

My personal headcanon for the dragon in Bran’s vision is that it’s after the wars, all the enemies are defeated - Cersei, fAegon (if he was ever supposed to appear in the show), the AOTD, etc. and it’s during the “Dream of Spring”.

Dany sets Drogon “free”. It’s mentioned multiple times in the show and books that “a dragon is not a slave” so that should apply to them having a rider as well. Dany will no longer be a dragonrider, have the dragons as her source of power, and Drogon can roam the world, finally being truly “free”. And that shot was him flying East, out of the city and away from Westeros.

That was how it was supposed to end.

Thanks for the question anon!

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Cloak & Dagger - ‘Level Up’ Review

"My whole life has been about harnessing this special energy. Maybe I should have been less driven."

Cloak & Dagger ends its second season with...

Oh God, I don't even have the energy for a clever pre-credits bit. Let's just jump past the break and talk a little.

I hate feeling like this.

Look, I get that this is a television show, and 'the season finale of a TV show I like was disappointing to me' is as close to the definition of a first world problem as you're likely to get. But, dammit, I love these characters and I love this show. And they are capable of so much better than what we got in this one.

It might be more accurate to say that they're capable of doing 'more' than this, as opposed to 'better', because what they actually did here is almost entirely good, with one significant exception. The failings of this episode almost entirely involve what it didn't do, rather than what it does.

And no, I'm not talking about plot points I personally wanted them to develop, or character developments that I wish had been different. I'm talking about something more fundamental to storytelling. Specifically, they didn't take the time to set up most of the plot mechanics that their story was relying on this week.

It's frustrating, because they simultaneously prove here that they're both capable of seeding both themes and plot mechanics into earlier episodes and paying them off later. The payoffs of the dark dimension pennies that they established half a season ago was entirely satisfying. Ditto the mirrors in the evil mall. They were established clearly as a choice between alternate self images ages ago when Tandy first saw them, and here they're the final visual key to Tandy and Ty accepting their identity as the heroes named Cloak and Dagger. That's great stuff. That's beautiful storytelling handled entirely through visual symbols. And the setup and payoff in each case were handled beautifully over the season.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that they didn't bother establishing so many of the plot devices that this episode was entirely riding on. What, exactly were the black clad, vaguely SWAT-team figures that Mayhem was fighting? We have no idea. They're apparently solid, since Mayhem can kick them, and for some reason they have actual functioning grenades, despite the many questions that raises as to how 'real' they are exactly as individuals. Evita gives them a handwave explanation as 'the things that a god would send to stop us', but that's no explanation at all. Particularly when they're mixing visual cues as to 'manifestations of the guilt felt by the person fighting them' (Hello, Fuchs), and 'numberless and faceless swarm brought forth from the dark gods.' No, in the end, what they are is 'something menacing for Evita and Mayhem to fight' while they intercut to Ty and Tandy furthering the actual emotional plot-core that the writers are interested in. That rings hollow as you watch it, because it fundamentally is hollow.

Similarly, we absolutely needed a clear answer about Andre/D'Spayre's domain. Is it an actual, physical place, or is it an abstract place of consciousness? Because they're playing it both ways and it's hurting the story they want to tell. The people that Andre is capturing through his trumpet of despair, and while I say that in a joking way it's a fantastic decision as a storytelling device, all physically disappear. We get that absolutely confirmed in the opening bank robbery montage, which again was exquisitely done. Bank robber and pursuing officer both vanish and appear in Andre's jazz club domain. So, that would indicate that it's a physical space that their bodies have moved to inter-dimensionally. But Andre's body is still laying on the stage in our dimension in an amazingly framed shot with his body over draped crimson fabric which made a thousand DPs feel tingly inside as they watched it. Ty and Tandy seem to have physically entered the nightclub after - ahem - entering Ty. But then they add a layer on top of that in which the people who are, apparently, physically inside Andre (again, ahem...) are also in a despair induced dreamstate inside that setting. Ty and Tandy bounce around through various despair hallucinations - at least they visually coded as hallucinations, but are occasionally treated as physical reality.

You see where I'm going with this. It's all incredibly muddy and could have been cleared up so much by simply establishing the rules right at the outset. 'This is physical space', they could have established, 'this is dream'. That would have solved about half of the problems this episode had. They could even have done it earlier in the season so that we didn't have to waste time with it here. But they didn't, and that created a problem in this one.

There is, of course, always the chance that they thought that they'd established this clearly enough by implications here and there, and it can't be disputed that there are clues scattered here and there throughout the season. But I feel like I'm a reasonably savvy viewer, and I watched every episode of the season multiple times. Sober, even. And I was still unclear about what the rules were at any given time.

Lastly, and I promise I have some positives coming up, this episode suffered from repeatedly kicking the legs out from under its own structure. Act one was the setup of Ty and Tandy getting into the Dark Dimension, whatever its rules are. Act two was them first fighting their own demons; Ty his driving need to live 'perfectly' and Tandy her inability to get past the knowledge of her father's abuse, and then them defending one another from the things that drive them to despair. Act three was them coming out of that and finally defeating Andre.

That's a solid structure to build on, and the message that the key to fighting despair is to have friends that will go on at great length about how awesome you are isn't the worst message for kids to hear. Particularly as the ancillary message is, 'absolutely stand up for your friends and tell them how awesome they are when they're giving in to despair.' The problem is that every time the basic setup changes the show goes out of its way to tell us that the previous segment was a waste of our time.

Ty and Tandy switch fight so that they can stand up for one another, and that's great. Then D'Spayre shows up and basically says, 'that's over, back to fighting your own demons.' and so they do. The status quo of ten minutes earlier is just re-established, sorry for wasting your time. Then, after they stand up to their own demons, D'Spayre says, 'OK, it's time for the real fight', which is essentially telling the audience, 'everything for the last twenty minutes didn't matter and was again a total waste of your time.'

That's a bad thing to tell your audience.

Like the earlier points, it's so entirely fixable. The only change needed to fix the first point would have been for Ty and Tandy to have independently chose of their own accord to go back to fighting their own demons because they were stronger for having heard the support they'd gotten from one another. Then it would have been character growth instead of just a dismissal of the previous five minutes of screen time. Similarly, if D'Spayre had acknowledged their escape from the despair illusion as a victory for them, or even been surprised by it, it would have read as part of their journey instead of just a way to negate the previous twenty minutes.

So. All that established, let's talk about the good stuff from both this and season two as a whole, because there was a lot of good in both.

- The way they used the metaphor of music throughout the season was inspired, and consistently paid off over and over again.

- The bait and switch when they made us think Mayhem would be the villain of the season and then substituted D'Spayre was ingenious and very well handled.

- Ending the season with Ty and Tandy as 'runaways' on a bus felt profoundly right on every level.

- Brooklyn McLinn gave a wonderful performance as both Andre and D'Spayre. I never saw him coming as a villain even after Lia was revealed to be a baddie, and any man who an make playing the trumpet seem viscerally aggressive is a force to be reckoned with.

- The image of Tandy jumping out of Cloak's darkness while hurling light is something I've waited my whole life to see and I was not disappointed. I rewound that scene at least five times.

(Additional) Bits and Pieces:

- Evita got short shrift. They really rushed her breaking things off with Ty in order to facilitate Ty and Tandy heading off to a possibly romantic relationship. We never even got to see the scene where they dealt with the fallout from her marrying a Loa and getting angry with Ty for reasons I'm not entirely clear about.

- That said, Noelle Renee Bercy did a great job here with the one plot point that was just irredeemably stupid. There was absolutely no real justification for her having to keep a candle lit in order to ensure that Ty and Tandy could come back from... the dark dimension which Ty has absolute control over making doorways to and from. She was an egregiously shoehorned ticking clock that was given no reason to be there beyond the script saying 'I have to keep this candle lit so that there's some dramatic tension.'

- That said, she still managed to keep her dignity while performing a role that was essentially 'speak earnest french to a candle for fifteen minutes of so.' That's not nothing.

- Did they just ditch all of the supporting characters? Delgado is apparently living in the church, which has become that apartment over the coffee shop in Smallville as far as its rotating occupancy. Ty may or may not be considered dead by the people of New Orleans, including his own parents - the episode declines to clarify anything on this point. Evita blows out that candle and leaves while carrying a sign that says 'my plot function is done and I'm leaving your story now. Tandy's mom helps her pack to leave, which was a nice detail, but we can only assume that leaves her free to recommit herself to pills and alcohol. Mina continues to specialize in anything the plot requires, including independently owning and operating a catscan machine for the use of friends. And Mayhem is hanging around New Orleans. They didn't say where Ty and Tandy were headed to investigate dead girls on a beach.

- Honestly, I've heard worse ideas than completely losing all the side characters for the next season and coming back to them later. That could be interesting.

- Mayhem apparently found Connors body, wherever Adina had left it, and strung it up in the police firing range, despite those places having constant staff on hand and CC television to capture her doing so.

- Lia has apparently been found guilty of something and been given STS (Sentenced to Serve) which is the official term for the folks picking up garbage by the side of the freeway. That's... not what they usually do in human trafficking cases...

- It's unfortunate how much they had to lean into the same iconography from the Avengers movies regarding people disappearing. I feel like they could have done more to differentiate it through the visuals. The interesting difference is that people didn't all disappear at once in this one.

- I have so many questions about the insect women bank robbers from the cold open.

- Bright light does in fact exacerbate migraines. That was a clever use of Tandy's powers.

- It was nice to confirm that the drug dealers are holding to their agreement with Ty.

- The fade to dark with Tandy alone on the bus is called a 'false out'.

Quotes:

Mayhem: "I’m having a bit of an identity crisis. See, I smooshed my two mouses together and oddly I feel like I know less about who I’m supposed to be if that makes any sense."

Ty: "Last time we talked she made it pretty clear she didn’t want anything to do with me." Tandy: "I think she meant romantically."

Evita: "Today we need an emperor, not the clothes."

Real Ty: "He killed Billy." Evil Ty: "Guess who’s still dead."

D'Spayre: "Technically, I’m everywhere. I thought you went to Catholic school, Mr. Johnson."

Tandy: "Switch Partners?" Ty: "If anyone can kick my ass it’s you."

No official word yet as to whether or not we're getting a Cloak & Dagger season Three. That said, what we got here works equally well as the end of this particular iteration of their story or the end of part one of the same. I sure am hoping it's the latter.

Two out of four threatening trumpet solos for the episode. Three for the season as a whole.

See you back for season three, good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, as my mother says.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#Cloak and Dagger #Tandy Bowen #Tyrone Johnson #Marvel #MCU #Cloak and Dagger Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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mastrrt · 6 years

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The Tigress Dilemma *fanfiction*

Usually, fanfic writers (such as I) have a hard time depicting complex characters such as Tigress, ergo this lack of this understanding about our characters can lead us to defile their original personalities and characteristics. I'm pretty sure most, if not, all of us are victims to the Tigress Dilemma, and this problem can only be resolved once Dreamworks has finished Tigress's arc. The Tigress Dilemma is basically what I mentioned above. We misinterpret Tigress and that could lead us to writing imposters instead. Now I have seen many fanfics, and all of them vary in the extent of how terrible their Tigress imposter is. I would say that for my fanfics, my Tigress imposter is pretty far off from the original character, but I feel I am getting there... it's a very slow progress, but every increment of time is making me better as a writer. Anywho, I'll be addressing some Tigress Imposter stereotypes. These stereotypes are the ones we want to avoid as much as possible. And if we do so, we can get closer to the original Tigress. Now, disclaimer, I am not here to tarnish the pride of any of you fanfic writers. I'm just here to point out my opinions and hopefully my opinions can do more good than harm. Also, to bring this blog a more positive vibe, I will be writing some Tigress stereotypes that we should all follow. But that'll be on the next post. 1. The 'Punk Girl School Bully' Type of Tigress. (LoA Tigress) Sleeves are for wimps... fat muscles... I got huge front teeth... i'll put your head on the toilet... pig anatomy on the facial region... you punk!... ILLL BEAT YOUUU UP!... girl that looks like a man... Those lines are all inside the ambit of any typical Buff School Girl Bully. And yeah, these types of people aren't the most likeable. Mainly because of their terrible ego and pride, their unmanaged temper, their constant screaming, and the fact that they bully. And these types of characters usually act upon their anger, and these types of characters are usually defeated by their own caprices. Now a lot of times, people usually confuse 'Punk Girl School Bully' as Tigress's characteristics.

For example, a lot of fanfictions tend to write this: Tigress was clouded with anger. How dare this cocky prick make fun of her name like that? She charged at him, trying to land a double fist strike on her belly, but it has seemed that her muscles were so angry that she suddenly turned into an amateur fighter and totally missed the cocky mite's stomache. Now she was even angrier. She gave a frustrated yell and pounced at the prick, driving her feet into a powerful tornado kick, but the man has sidestepped and she was too angry to use that momentum to execute another kick upon landing. Oh she was so so SO angry that everything turned red. Even though the man was merely a stranger, his smart remarks was enough to somehow make Tigress want to tamper him, as if her anger was derived from personal matter. Oh yes, Tigress was so weak that her peace has succumbed so easily to something as superficial as an empty insult. It isn't like she's a warrior who learned integrity, who lived by virtues and proverbs, and learned to swallow her pride the hard way. Nope. She was just the average hot head. "You! You idiot!" She yelled, driving her fist into arbitrary turns and twist with the speed of a toddler's fist in a fit of frenzy. And yet, after delivering such 'efficient' attacks, the man had avoided her punches the Muhammad Ali way. What's next? The rope-a-dope? Is that how weak Tigress became because of her anger? Oh, and since she's sooo angry, she also became majorly stupid! Since she's losing, she might as well become more desperate to win and because of this, she kinda lost 9/10 of her damn brain. It isn't like she had experienced worst before. It isn't like she's been in a tower surrounded by hundreds of adversaries, outmatched, outgunned, out everything, and still managed to escape through a genius idea to catapult her and her Enterprise out the flaming tower THROUGH the toppling flaming tower.

Look, Tigress can be hot head, but she doesn't allow it to manifest in a way that hampers her during battle. She's a warrior who for sure learned patience. Yes, she might have let herself succumb to her anger during the first movie (by trying to fight Tai Lung despite her master's efforts to stop her) but do understand that it was because of that cursed snow leopard that her father was just outright terrible to her, and 20 years of desperation and overwhelming commitment to kung fu led her to think that defeating Tai Lung is the key to Shifu's heart. Watch the Second movie through and through, with the eyes of a scrutenizing critic. If she is angry, it is usually to appear intimidating or lethal. It's a great strategy, escpecially now that her opponents would surely hold back once they hear the low baritone of her growl. But never, never, never, never, I assure you, did she appear angry and let that rage make her a haphazard, stupid, mess.

Also, fanfic writers tend to also write this: Tigress crossed her arms and growled. Po was so annoying! He wouldn't stop babbling about his new dumpling recipe. If he says 'broccoli broth' one more time, she is sure her dormant side would burst. "SHUT UP PO! YOU ARE AN IDIOT! YOU ARE SO CHILDISH! YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE THE DRAGON WARRIOR!" And then, Po cried and ran away from the kitchen. The rest of the five gave her a look that could compare to the menacing glare of a thousand men, and they all left her to find the weeping Po. She sneered, she didn't need them anyways. She didn't have a family. And they were no friends of hers.

Tigress is not like this! She values her friends, and she talks to them like friends. Do no potray her the LoA way, because she's not always grumpy... and she is, by chance, grumpy, it's mostly for a reason. When the other five are irritated or even disgusted of Po, you can see that only Tigress smiles. And when she is in an argument, she usually deliver herself in a calm and threatening. Yeah, calm and threatening can be together. Tigress works as a paradox. I think the problem here is that people mistake seriousness and grumpiness as neigh synonyms. DON'T mistake those two different words with the same definition. Tigress is serious, but rarely grumpy in the way LoA/ fancfictions potrays her (just compare KFP 2 Tigress to LoA Tigress (there's a big difference I tell you that (mostly because she doesn't haphazardly turn into a big bish (is this even grammatically correct?))))

2. The Morally Deficient Tigress. I hate you!... you've always been terrible to me Shifu. So I hate you too!... you guys are not my family!... i have no family!... brat times twenty... your spoon is stupid... everyone is stupid... I don't wanna do this anymore... i'll turn evil in six seconds if you don't assuage my ego... cold hearted... insults everywhere... long sullen silences followed by mean comments followed by even more long sullen silences... angst angst angst for no reason... teenage i-have-20-pounds-of-eyeliner-under-my-eyes prototype. this type of imposter Tigress is probably one of the worst forms of Tigress out there. You cannot just ignore that she has been raised by two kung fu masters, one has morals that are so polished and perfect, and the other one with flaws but regardless still wiser than most. She's also follows a regimented schedule of supreme discipline throughout the course of her twenty-eight years, so surely she has been taught hardwork, patience, determination and other virtues that any average olympian athletes would typically have. Despite being called cold-hearted, stoic, perhaps even mean, do remember that she is also a HERO. With a hero's heart and the strength of a hero's mind. You can not simply ignore that she's a good person who had saved, quite possibly, thousands of lives, expecting nothing in return except the heart of her father and a place to reside. Do not mistake badassery with idiocy. Do not make her morally deficient like she's a little child with the mindset of a brat on a bad day.

Here's some examples of this nightmare: "Why do you keep these stuff? You're so childish, you don't deserve to be the Dragon Warrior!" Tigress looked around his loft, threatened by the action figures and the posters of the masters that adorned it.

Po frowned, "But... but... items like these have very big value to me Tigress. Especially my action figures, I cherish them because it's a large fragment of my childhood memories!"

Tigress did not understand. Of course she did not, not only is she whimsy, grumpy, angry and stupid, she also lacks understanding and lessons that can usually be self-taught at the age of twenty. She acts like a little child and that's all her morality is limited to. "No! They're wooden things with no value whatsoever. Stop being a fanboy. Stop being yourself! I can't support you! You idiot."

And she left the room with grandeur ---Sharpei Style with the hint of swagger. Five days later... "It's all your fault why we're here Po! All your fault. It isn't like you made a wonderful plan and I kinda destroyed it after this cocky douche made me angry and I decided to fight him and ditch your plan. And since my dignity got the best of me, it isn't like I'm blaming you 100% on our unfortunate demise when I know 200% that i'm to blame." Po tried to speak, but Tigress continued, "Ya'll should have listened to me! Me me me me! Me me me me!" The end!

Okay okay, it's a little too exaggerated, but you get the point right? Tigress doesn't act like this. She is kind and nice, she's truly supportive even with her doubts, and she loves and values her friends, albeit these traits are not exposed because it's overshadowed by her stoic demeanor. Whatever... sometimes light filters through her facade and you can see her vulnerabilities.

3. The Profesional Becomes the Biggest Amateur. Gets defeated by a few alligators who could barely fight... can't get unstuck from a rope THAT ISNT EVEN KNOTTED NOR THICK ENOUGH TO CARRY TWO POUNDS... can't get out a sticky situation even though she has been through worse... pathetic tiger... no longer has super strength that she has been gifted with. Now I'm just a thread's breadth away before typing a full fledge rant. Yes! I get it. She has been defeated by people who Po can defeat. She has been defeated by Tai lung and Po was able to defeat Tai Lung. But that was because Po was in a special situation, and it was truly only Po who could defeat Tai Lung (I'll adress this in a new post.) Have ya'll ever of this rule, in both film making and book writing, that authors must refrain from degrading everyone's intelligence so that a single character can appear in the caliber of a genius? Basically, what I'm saying is that you cannot make the five (escape Tigress) leagues weaker than their original selves just for the sake of making Po or your main OCs appear stronger. One, that's a terrible illusion that even a blind man can see through. And two, that's just disrespectful for a The Five. Not only are the five overshadowed, but ya'll also heavily disregarded the fact that they are warriors that did a lot. You're forgetting that Tigress can do this

Do not forget that she is the person who can do so much more. If you want a story where Tigress becomes a damsel in distress, and Po is the one to save her, DO NOT get her kidnapped by five wolves. Or ten. Or even twenty. Because this tiger can handle of them easy. Make sure she is defeated by a whole fudging army, or a bunch of hooded warriors who are thousands of years old and are as good as Shifu in kung fu. Make sure her defeat is reasonable and respects what she can do. KNOW what she can do, so that you learn her limits. Give her a challenge, give her a run for her money. Don't make her pathetic just because you want someone else to seem not pathetic. Us fan fic writers say that Tigress is hardcore. Awesome. Badarse. So maybe we should write her that way. Some fan fics I read write that Tigress got defeated because she was hungry or tired and couldn't fight against a few adversaries. I roll me eyes. Bro! You cannot make hunger the reason why she's defeated😂 have you seen what she ate during the first KFP movie? Her meals consists of tea and a small, chewy block of tofu. Please. She had trained her body and mind to resist pain in a way that wouldn't affect her during battle. And don't go destroying her stamina either. If she can go the whole night just battling a bunch of wolves, without even so much as passing out then pulease, don't make tiredness as an excuse. But there are some exceptions though. Like maybe she got tired because she drained her chi. Then that's understandable. So much work.

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calamity-bean · 7 years

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Re-reading LOA for like the 50th time because it's my life's blood, not sure if you touched on this - how did Selah get into tea? Suddenly very curious.

As an organized, thoughtful, architect sort of writer, and definitely not one of those gardener-types who’s always sort of making things up as they go along, I definitely have an answer to this! The answer is … I … I’m not sure.

I think I did start to get into the issue in a draft at one point, but I ended up not pursuing it very far. It didn’t seem important; the gist was simply that he was a stubborn, idealistic entrepreneur who refused to heed the advise of well-intentioned discouragers who suggested that dropping out of college to open a tea shop might not be the best idea. But although I’m undecided about where his passion for tea came from in-universe, I can tell you why I made him passionate about tea.

Selah, you see, has always been very opaque to me. The show gives us just a glimpse in season 1 of a man who seems rather serious, rather stern, and rather angry, at least of late … and then, for so long, he’s nothing more than a name uttered occasionally for plot reasons but almost never reflected upon as an actual person. This troubled me, as I began writing in the break between seasons 2 and 3. I’ve never been a particular fan of his, or of his relationship with Anna, but it troubled me that there was this figure who should have been of great significance in her life, yet we, the viewers, knew little about him and little about Anna’s relationship to him. I often compare Selah to water in my writing, because that’s how I feel when I try to get into his head: as though I’m looking into turbulent, clouded, deep water that I can never see the bottom of. I wondered if perhaps Anna felt the same way about him. Like she had to fill in the gaps of Selah with her own imagination, because even in their marriage, there was so much of him she could never seem to reach.

I could have made Selah a practical, bottom-line oriented entrepreneur, just trying to run a lucrative business. Someone like LOA-DeYoung, who knows that coffee sells better than tea. But I wanted there to be something thoughtful and sensitive beneath Selah’s closed-off surface. Something … idealistic and eccentric. Because Anna is idealistic and eccentric, and she’s drawn to those qualities in others: hence her attraction to rebellious, justice-oriented Abe and odd, inspiring, humanistic Edmund. So it seemed essential to me that if Anna was to have any love for Selah, and if he was to have any power to haunt her after his disappearance – haunt not merely her pocketbook, but her mind and her heart – then there must be SOMETHING about him that hinted toward a sensitivity most people might not expect from his outward demeanor.

For this story, that meant that his interest in tea should not be simply financial, but based in a sincere fascination and respect for the traditions associated with tea-drinking and for the artistry behind creating it. For better or worse, it makes Anna associate tea inextricably with Selah – with her favorite version of him, at least. The gentle, intriguing version with hidden depths.

How much of that was actually Selah, and how much was Anna trying to make sense of this man whose senseless disappearance left such a gaping wound in her life? Probably a bit of both. At any rate, I know this doesn’t really answer your question. But I hope it’s of interest nonetheless. (And it warms my heart SO much that you reread. ❤)

#as y'all can probably tell ... i like LOA-selah a lot more than i like canon selah #canon failed to make him or his relationship with anna interesting to me #so i tried my best to do it myself #oh yeah and i'm DEFINITELY a ''gardener'' type writer lmao #law & order & authoritea #asks #op #apedarling

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punchdrunkdoc · 7 years

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Arrow’s storytelling problems

I was originally going to tack this onto a response to an excellent piece by @eilowyn1 but it became SUPER long and I didn’t want to hijack her post. (But you should definitely read her thoughts, as my post is still in direct response to it. It’s also just a great read from the perspective of an aspiring screen writer).

Now, I’ve never had ambitions to be a screenwriter but the process of constructing a story fascinates me, and I’ve had a lot of thoughts about Arrow’s narrative issues for a while now. I guess today was the day to let them out.

Point 1:

This concerns the serialised vs semi-serialised TV structures @eilowyn1 mentioned:

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer, like The X-Files and Supernatural, is semi-serialized, and this is why I think it’s more successful: there is an ongoing, season-long arc (the “mythology” episodes on The X-Files), but there are also character-driven one-shots that deal with a monster-of-the-week that usually helps reveal things about the characters you wouldn’t get to explore if you were going for non-stop plot.”

I was a BIG X-Phile back in the day and, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong), it was the first show to adopt this type of structure. It revolutionised long form TV storytelling structure - a structure which I think Arrow tries to emulate in a way, with their ‘Big Bads’.

They were somewhat successful in S1 and S2 - the two seasons in which the storytelling felt tight, organic and relatively well-plotted.

Season 1

It slowly became clear that there was an underlying conspiracy linking certain people and events to a mysterious ‘Undertaking’. Solving the mystery of this undertaking then became a parallel goal running alongside the ‘monster of the week (MOTW)’ takedowns and it all came to a head towards the end of the season.

This was the closest Arrow has ever come to the X-Files mytharc, and it actually has quite a few parallels; the conspiracy tangentially involved Oliver via his own tragedy (being on the island and losing his father vs Mulder’s sister being abducted) and his parent’s collusion (also similar to Mulder). But the undertaking (like the Alien mytharc) wasn’t happening as a direct consequence of the main protagonist - it was a decades-long plot that he stumbled upon, and decided to stop. This, I think, was crucial to its success. It’s why you can realistically go several episodes focusing on MOTW without directly dealing with the conspiracy; the architects of the conspiracy aren’t spending all their time plotting against the hero, they’re too caught up in their own machinations.

Season 2

There was a similar underlying conspiracy linking certain events and people, but this time it was orchestrated by Slade as a revenge-plot DIRECTLY against Oliver. Even though this goes against what I said above, it was still somewhat successful, because the reveal happened quite late in the show, and we were fully invested in this plot because the show had taken the time to introduce the character and build his relationship with Oliver. Also (and this is just from memory, so may be wrong), it felt like once the Slade reveal happened, the rest of the season was pretty much dedicated to stopping him.

In season 4 and 5, the writers tried to recreate these two formulas, but without the same success. (I’m going to ignore Season 3 because that was just a giant mess in terms of the season long mytharc/big bad).

Season 4: They tried the season 1 formula; you had a Machiavellian BigBad intent on his years-long plot of villainy, which Oliver tried to stop. Oliver was not the direct target, but was tangentially involved because of his links to LOA.

But, the reason season 4 failed was because they introduced Damien Darhk as the (super powerful) BigBad FAR TOO EARLY. The writers then had to twist themselves into narrative knots to explain A) how Oliver and the team could waste time on MOTW storylines that had nothing to do with DD and his plot for world domination and B) why DD didn’t just kill Oliver in episode 4x01. Remember DD’s magnanimous ‘time out’? And how the team destroyed the totem halfway through the season, then had to rebuild it for plot purposes?

EPIC FAIL!

Season 5: This is recapitulating season 2′s formula; a BigBad from Oliver’s past who is intent on revenge. But, again, they introduced him and his motivations far too early and (unlike Slade) they haven’t given us a reason to care - we don’t know Prometheus or the father that (supposedly) sparked off this crusade. Now, the writers may bait and switch later in the season (there seems to be a reason he hasn’t been unmasked) but at present, his back story is supremely uninteresting. Another reason this season is failing in terms of plot and pacing, is that the writers aren’t even TRYING to come up with a reason why the team can ignore Prometheus (and he can ignore the team) from week-to-week while they deal with MOTWs. He’s conveniently leaving them alone while Oliver hunts for birds and fights aliens.

I know there are still 9 episodes left, but this season long arc already feels like an EPIC FAIL!

The writers are PROFESSIONALS! They are being paid to create this! And yet, I’ve read better plotted fanfic. It’s so frustrating!!

Point 2:

Based on this quote: “Arrow doesn’t have one-off episodes to focus on character building. It doesn’t have wacky meta episodes like Supernatural, it doesn’t have concept episodes like The X-Files and it doesn’t have madcap absurdist comedy episodes like Buffy.All of this, I think, is to Arrow’s detriment.”

THIS!!

This is an incredibly wasted opportunity on a COMIC BOOK SHOW! The X-files managed to do it, and that was a MUCH more grounded, serious show. Arrow is about frickin’ superheroes! Characters run around in masks and leather and fight crime with magic rags and super-powered screams! There were even aliens this year. ALIENS!!

So why is the storytelling so god-damn conventional? I know the show started as gritty and dark and ‘realistic’ but we’re a long way from that now (no matter how ‘back-to-basics’ they pretend to be - need I mention ‘Aliens’ again?)

Why can’t they embrace their ridiculousness a bit more and have fun with their structure?

Give me a bottle-episode, where OTA are trapped in an abandoned, bomb-ridden building for the entire 43 minutes and must use their combined talents to escape.

Give me an amnesia episode where they all wake up in the lair with no memory of each other, and have to work out their connections and purpose

Give me a ‘Bad Blood’ episode, where Oliver and Felicity tell conflicting stories to Digg about a botched mission.

Give me an episode entirely from the point of view of a BigBad’s henchman as he tries to do his job while that annoying Green Arrow guy keeps getting in the way

Or from the point of view of Green Arrow’s biggest fangirl or unofficial biographer while he tries to rescue them

Give me a proper ‘Small Potatoes’-style Human Target farce

Give me a ‘Cops’-style episode where all the episode footage is shot by Star City residents on their cellphones

Hell, embrace Flashpoint for real and give me Earth2 Digg and Felicity interacting with the team

The X-files was a serious show, with death and cancer and abductions, but they still had episodes which were pure comedic relief. And it worked!

Why can’t it work in a universe that has time travel and magic? Does a comic book show need to be so conventional?

So those were my thoughts - criticisms really. And it’s not just because I’m in a negative space with the show in general. These are thoughts I’ve had since well before season 5, and it comes from a place of frustration more than bitterness. Because I’ve always felt Arrow had the potential to be SO MUCH MORE than what it has turned out to be.

And that’s a shame.

P.s. Feel free to add on your wacky episode wishlist - I’d love to hear them!

#Arrow #arrow criticism #X-files #x

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Cloak and Dagger - ‘Blue Note’ Review

"Make them ride the highs and lows with us until we all come out the other side, changed."

Dangit show, please don't make me feel bad for Lia. I refuse to feel bad for Lia.

OK, I feel a little bad for Lia.

This is a story about ascension.

They may have mentioned it a time or two. 'Power up.' 'Get to the next level.' 'Run the scale until you get to the top.' You know, the occasional subtle hint.

In which case, it's probably germane to start the discussion with the title. Forgive me in advance if you're a proper student of Jazz as a form. I'm personally not, as you'll see in just a moment. I apologize for the grotesque oversimplification that follows.

A blue note, in jazz, is 'a minor interval where a major is expected. A note played at a slightly different pitch.' The upshot is that after running a musical scale, instead of playing the expected major finish to the scale you play a different note. A 'blue' note. Typically a variant of the expected major off by somewhere between a semitone and a quartertone.

That feels like an accurate and specific description of Andre's ascension into becoming a Loa, almost certainly intentionally. He's ascending and it's going to end up slightly darker and 'off.' It helps that Andre himself is specifically underlining the metaphor right from the very first scene of the episode. Ninety-six months before the current events, Andre and his band were about to play a show that was intended to make their name in the music world. Andre specifically refers to the LPs of the jazz greats in the bin at the record studio as 'the gods.' Further, he clearly states that it's his intention to become one of them through playing his performance. Through running the scale up to the blue note, he intends to become one of the gods. You just cannot state a thematic metaphor more directly than that.

Sadly for Andre, that's the night of his first migraine, which brings the show, and his career, crashing down around him. That's right, a good chunk of this week's episode is devoted to Andre's secret origin.

The timing for this background information isn't terrible, although it does feel a little bit like we're turning our wheels waiting for the big final confrontation. Fortunately they get away with it for a few different reasons. The primary one being the performance of Brooklyn McLinn as Andre. Despite the truly terrible things that we've seen Andre do, and the terrible things he continues to do in this episode, it's impossible not to feel for him during the scenes of his attempted suicide. That's not easy to do, as the scenes are solo and completely without dialogue. The only thing that doesn't really work about the flashback sequences, and it's a minor thing, is the way his migraines are timed to onset with his attempt to hit the blue note. There's an unpleasant aspect of 'you flew too close to the sun' about it that seems to almost be blaming Andre for his own migraines, as if they were caused by his own hubris. That struck an unpleasant note for me, no pun intended.

Another aspect of the structure that made the flashbacks not feel like they were just wasting time is that by devoting a little time to telling Andre's backstory they could simultaneously use that time to clear up a few extraneous plot threads before next week's finale. So Tandy and Mayhem track down Lia's body, while Ty goes to resolve that 'gangs want him dead' issue that's still lingering on the periphery.

I have to say, Ty's 'negotiation' techniques with the gang leaders were just wonderful. I honestly thought he'd let the one die when he threw him off the roof. Good on Ty for knowing how to use his powers to the best effect by this point, and for knowing that he can't really do anything about people buying drugs for themselves. So he focused on what he could, and now the gangs of New Orleans know better than to try to sell drugs which will be used in human trafficking. That was a good resolution to that thread. Obviously in a comic book show you can't have your characters magically 'fix' something as genuinely awful as human trafficking without coming across as crass. This was a good way to show Ty making a difference without crossing a line into something distasteful. Well judged.

Meanwhile, Tandy and Mayhem hash out whether extra-judicial murder is ever justified by the expedience of Tandy believing it is, then looking into the soul of someone who seems truly irredeemable and learning to see their humanity. Mayhem was a good foil for that particular character journey, and neither the character nor the journey outstayed its welcome.

Which brings me neatly back to the last reason that the structure of Andre's flashbacks didn't feel like a waste of time. They used our assumptions about how flashbacks work to pull an impressive rug-pull and have Andre of today's plot suddenly dovetail and interact with the Andre of seven-ish years ago's plot. Apparently, Andre of today sensed Lia being given back her hope and reached out into her despair space of seven years ago and stopped Tandy from giving her hope back to her.

Notice that the above paragraph, when written down starkly like that, sounds absolutely 100% bat-sh*t crazy and does not make a lick of logical sense. But in the episode it makes perfect aesthetic sense, and I've never seen a flashback structure used in that way before, which makes me love it. Who needs logic when you have visual poetry.

So, after giving us some backstory and cleaning up some side plots, the episode arrives at the only tangible thing that you can point to and say really 'happened' this week, if you're just looking at it in terms of pure plot progress. Andre has summoned all the girls he's 'infected' with despair to the sight of that fatal jazz performance and played the blue note, successfully 'leveling up' and getting through the locked door in his despair dimension. Cue next week's climactic battle.

It shouldn't all hang together and feel like one complete piece, but it does without question, and it's all down to the expert application of that ascension theme we started this discussion with. If I was going to compare the plot structure to music, I would call it jazz. Really, good jazz.

Bits and Pieces:

-- Very cool combination trick of Tandy throwing the light knife into Ty who teleported to where it needed to be released. Too bad it was just a little too late.

-- Andre's veve lines lighting up looked a lot like he was finding cell reception.

-- Nice little seed early on of showing Melissa Bowen's records in Andre's record store of despair.

-- I actually believed that Tandy was trying to protect Loa from waking up in an ambulance with strange men after what she'd been through. That was a clever ruse.

-- I feel like we were denied a very interesting conversation of Ty finding out that Evita got god-married.

-- Ty teleporting does not interrupt his cell reception or drop any call he happens to be on at the time. That's suspiciously dependable cell service.

-- I suspect that they showed Adina burning the bloody newspapers both as a way for Ty to understand that she'd murdered Connors and to tell the viewers, 'No, we're not faking you out, she totally killed him for real.'

-- Will Brigid get a turn at being in control of her hybrid body after the crisis is over?

-- It was a little awkward having people suddenly vanishing as a plot point what with the snap still being theoretically a thing. I'm not sure where exactly this season of Cloak & Dagger fits in relation to Infinity War, but it definitely made me second guess if that was related to what happened.

-- Tandy's plan of borrowing younger-Lia's hope in the form of sheet music and giving it to older Lia in order to give her hope back was a really elegant plan. On most shows that would have worked.

-- “Luke Cage in Harlem rumble” by Karen Page. That entire scene with Solomon is why representation is so important. Luke Cage is a hero that looks like him and because of that he inspires him to try to be better. That. That's why representation matters. Every kid deserves to see themselves in their heroes.

-- When Ty or Tandy touch someone they go into that person's 'realm' for lack of a better world. When Andre touches someone he pulls them into his. That feels like an important distinction.

Quotes:

Tandy: "Tyrone, if you ask me about my feelings one more time I’m seriously gonna kill you."

Tandy: "Brigid was a better liar." Mayhem: "Yeah, well that’s about all she was better at."

Soloman: "Sometimes you can’t fix things. Some things are just broke."

Ty: "Which one is she?" Tandy: "Both of them."

Tandy: "When all hope is gone, this is what’s left."

Tandy: "You can’t kill her. An hour ago you practically begged me not to hurt her." Mayhem: "An hour ago she had something I wanted."

A solid penultimate episode that got all of the necessary setup in place for what looks like to be an explosive finale.

Three out of four abandoned trumpets

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

#Cloak and Dagger #Tandy Bowen #Tyrone Johnson #Marvel #MCU #Cloak and Dagger Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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miss-m-calling · 5 years

Text

Het Swap 2019 letter

Requests:

American Gods (TV) – Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

Black Sails -- Miranda Barlow/John Silver

Good Girls -- Beth Boland/Rio

Firefly -- Jayne Cobb/Saffron, Jayne Cobb/River Tam

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with.

Requests:

American Gods (TV)

Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

I ship it. Yes I do. They had me at “gimme-my-coin-dead-wife”-flicks-him-into-wall. The snarky road trip was the best thing I never knew I wanted until it happened, and I adored every second of it, not to mention the upped shippiness in S2. They’re both such assholes and so fascinating, even if they start to mellow toward each other a bit, and all the gods/magic/resurrection stuff swirling around them begs to be explored further. Also I love love love how their dynamic is about equal parts spikiness, pathos, and humor (they’re funny! and the canon doesn’t shy away from putting them in ludicrous situations), and it weaves seamlessly between those three. Plus she’s half his size yet can and does beat him up with literally one finger, and then there’s the angst of he having killed her, feeling really guilty about it, and then bringing her back. And the way that their New Orleans adventure makes clear they have feelings for each other (S1 was more one-sided SweeneyàLaura) but neither wants to admit it. And and and… yeah, I just love them.

Please give me either missing scenes from the road trip (if you can work in a divergence, that’s great - for example, I like Salim, but if you want to have him boot Sweeney and Laura to the curb and go off on his own, or Sweeney to boost his taxi before Salim catches them, or whatever else to have those two alone, go for it!), or a divergence from either season (instead of going to Ostara, they go where? to see whom? about getting Laura resurrected. Or things go down differently in New Orleans, or Cairo, or anywhere else) or something about these two post-canon.

-Wednesday’s big war finally comes, and “don’t you dare die on me [again], you asshole” is a line either Sweeney or Laura (or both) might say to each other.

-Speaking of other deities, I really enjoyed their brief canon interactions with the likes of Ostara, Anansi, and Mama-Ji, and I’d like to see more of that, especially Ostara’s polite yet over-it attitude, Anansi very obvious over-it attitude and his dramatic flair, or Mama-Ji being one of the few capable of giving Laura pause.

-All the petty, ridiculous ways in which Sweeney’s bad luck manifests itself make me laugh (can’t help it, won’t even try), and I’m down for more variations on that theme.

-Sweeney and Laura get drunk and wake up married. Or some sex and/or blood resurrection spell also results in basically an unbreakable marriage bond, whether it also secures resurrection or not. Or marrying the dead keeps them (sorta) alive. Or being married makes it possible for them to share magical/supernatural abilities. They’re both pissed about it, but secretly having to make it work may not be the worst thing that’s ever happened...

-My perfect AG spinoff would basically be Sweeney and Laura tooling around America, looking to get her resurrected (whether they succeed or not is up to you), stealing ever more ridiculous vehicles, arguing/fighting and having those pesky moments where vulnerability and genuineness creep in – and fucking. So yessiree I’d be down for porn, including “it’s technically necrophilia/zombiesex” porn, including a canon-divergent first time, or a second/later time after they had their first time in NOLA in canon.

My two canon-specific, really strong DNWs for this pairing are this: Sweeney doesn’t die (at least not permanently), and I’m not into Laura being Essie’s reincarnation/descendant or – as fanon suggests and canon sorta maybe hints she may be – some sort of reincarnation of Sweeney’s wife from back when he was a king in old Ireland. Reincarnation/“new love looks like old love”/“lost love found again” plots bore me, and I don’t enjoy ships that hinge on characters being somehow destined to be together. Characters having agency is also my jam. Anyway I’m certain that Laura would have neither time nor patience for the notion that Destiny Fate and All That Jazz threw her together with ginger minge, and even if it were technically true, she’d still want this relationship to work on her terms – and Sweeney obviously has a problem with Laura’s cheating, her relationship with Shadow, her personality (though he also recognizes they’re alike in many ways), and all that maps onto his anger and sadness over becoming irrelevant over time, so it’s not just about Laura. So yeah, let them be their own (grumpy, spiky, dysfunctional) people, and let Laura’s dynamic with Sweeney not be shaped solely by his past and his issues.

Black Sails

Miranda Barlow/John Silver

I fell into this canon head-first and found myself with a special fondness for this ship, although they never really interact in canon at all. I definitely see it as an early seasons ship, not just because Miranda was, you know, alive, but because the early Silver was the ever-scheming trickster with a smile and a smart-allecky comment always up his sleeve, ever ready to lie, cheat, steal, and murder to his best advantage, yet already with glimpses of a capacity to care about people other than himself. What I’m saying is, he was fun to have around in a way the later Silver somewhat lost as the price of his character development.

We know Miranda has an eye for a handsome man. I suspect S1-2 Silver totally would bed the captain’s woman if he thought he could get away with it or it could be a way to manipulate Flint, only Miranda is smart and pragmatic, has a core of pure steel, and can see right through Silver, which I’m convinced she would. Unlike Flint, Miranda has done her grieving and she’s so ready to move on and feel alive again. Not saying that Silver would become another great love of hers, but they could have fun. He’d make her laugh. After years of Flint’s moods, Silver would be so easy to get along with. The sex could be great and not angsty or merely dutiful. He’d inevitably find an angle to play, but then Miranda’s no stranger to maneuvering around and with people, so maybe she’d find that his manipulative ways are half the fun. They might even fall in love for real, though that’s not a requirement, and I definitely don’t think love would be the same as absolute trust in this case. (Also I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make the relationship revolve around their shared fixation on Flint, or focus on Miranda’s angst about Thomas or the legacy of Thomas/Flint. These can be mentioned, but I’d prefer that doesn’t hijack the story.)

Prompts:

-Flint sends Silver to Miranda with a message or on an errand, and thinks nothing more of it (or possibly he wants Miranda’s assessment of how much he can trust the “new cook”). But then Silver and Miranda are intrigued by each other and start finding excuses to see each other again. Bonus points if they orchestrate encounters in a way which allows them both to pretend they don’t actually want to see each other again, it just happened, sometimes things just happen but now that they’re both here they might as well take advantage of this opportunity, etc.

-S2 divergence: James dies at Charles Town, and Miranda lives. Silver may or may not lose a leg. Silver and Miranda have to assume at least temporary leadership of the crew in order to get everyone safely back to Nassau. Do they become pirate co-captains or lady captain and her quartermaster? Do they dissolve the crew and try for a different life? Do they make a play for the Urca gold, after Silver confesses his double-dealing to an angry, grieving Miranda (Jack maybe doesn’t capture the gold, it’s still up for grabs, or if Jack does how does that play out)? I mention lower down I’d prefer no angsty sex for these two, but in this scenario I could see any sex that may happen being, at least at first, angry and angsty, but also conducive to emotional healing.

-Actual witch!Miranda. I mean storybook witch, with a cauldron in which she brews that invulnerability potion for Flint and possibly some broom-flying, rather than a Wiccan or another kind of real witch. Maybe she needs a human participant or human-sourced ingredients for some of her most powerful spells, and since Flint isn’t really comfortable with magic Miranda decides that the new ship’s cook will do, only magic has a way of binding people together more closely than they intended. Or maybe she attempts to bind a familiar, hoping for a cat or a bird, and the magic picks Silver, much to her (and his) initial consternation? Maybe Miranda doesn’t really know what she’s doing, she used to dabble in London but hasn’t tried making a spell in years and has none of her books of magic with her, or she’s heard the crew’s rumors about her and decided to give this whole magic thing a go, and oops it actually works! Either way, there would definitely be snark and “if I give you X for a spell, what’s in it for me?”

-Flint respected and cared about Miranda, but also kept her waiting on the sidelines while he did stuff. Gimme Miranda and Silver at a point where they trust each other, maybe not completely, but enough that they can scheme together, where she is impressed by his quick wits but she’ll also tell him when one of his plans is likely to go wrong in XYZ different ways. Then, obviously, they execute a plan/heist by drawing on their combined skill sets.

-Fucking someone is easy. Sleeping the night through next to that person is hard.

-Speaking of which: sex. With or without plot. In the bed, in the kitchen, in Nassau, on The Walrus when the rest of the crew is on shore-leave, or a stolen moment during the journey to Charles Town. First times, later times. Any position is good, I’ll just mention a couple possibilities: Cunnilingus with a side of mind games. Pegging. Fingering (of either by either). Intense (emotionally and physically) PIV. I could see them both initiating sex and wanting to “direct traffic” at one time or another, both wanting to keep up a front but then being ambushed by actual emotion and vulnerability. Let it be happy and giggly, or passionate, or playful, or unexpectedly tender, or seemingly casual and then very emotional and heartfelt – just please don’t let it be angsty.

-Miranda discovers she likes to get her fingers in Silver’s hair during sex, both gently and not. He likes it too, which is not to say he’ll necessarily admit he likes it.

-Sexual role-play: the demure lady abducted by a wicked pirate, only it turns out the lady’s resistance is symbolic at best. Who gets to play the lady and who the pirate is entirely open. If Miranda’s the lady, I suspect early seasons!Silver’s attempts at being menacing and dominating may make her break character for a giggle – and if Miranda’s the pirate menacing the demure and naïve, er, young gentleman, I’ll just say that I think she should wear Silver’s clothes (after washing them or making him bring a spare set).

Two canon-specific DNWs: whatever you end up writing, please don’t kill off Miranda or imply she dies “off-screen.” Let her live to fuck Silver another day. Also, I love Flint/Miranda in all their angsty glory, and I love all the intense, complicated emotion of Flint & Silver and the potential of Flint/Silver. I know I said not to make the fic revolve around Flint’s influence on their lives, but I’m fine with Flint in a walk-on role, if you want to write that. I don’t see him making too big a fuss, Miranda definitely treats her brief affair with the pastor as her business and her business alone – I can see Flint being exasperated that Silver hanging around Miranda is now a thing, or suspicious of Silver’s intentions but also trusting Miranda to handle it.

Good Girls (TV)

Beth Boland/Rio

How do I ship them, let me count the ways! I sat down to watch a fun, silly, caper show and ended up with all these feelings. I also can never resist an older woman/younger man, opposites-attract pairing, especially if it turns out that the opposites which are attracting also have way more in common than seemed apparent at first, while still remaining fundamentally different people with possibly-incompatible lifestyles. I love that while Beth can’t keep her crush hidden at all, Rio’s a very cool customer but at the same time has zero chill when it comes to her. I love how their comfort level with each other grows throughout the first two seasons, but they also both suck at communication and tend to just do their own thing or take what the other one will do for granted, and there are moments or periods of real ugliness punctuating their dynamic (like when Beth sets Rio up and he shoots Dean, or how she handles their “breakup” and he retaliates with the dead body and messing with Beth’s head, and then of course the S2 ending). There are definitely feelings on both side, they’re just really inconvenient feelings, given who she is and who he is, and they’re mixed with the lust and the illicit thrill of danger. For one thing, Beth has had a pretty obvious crush on Rio since the start, and he has pretty obviously found her intriguing at least from when she talked him out of killing the three women. For another thing, when she got out of the biz, Beth acted like she couldn't imagine how he’d cope without her to launder his money, so there’s a weird kind of misplaced protectiveness. It’s not Twue Wuv, but it’s not just sex either, as she told Dean in order to hurt Dean and because she knew he would understand that as her motivation. He wouldn’t be able to understand that she feels alive in Rio’s world. And it's not Twue Wuv for Rio either (he also doesn’t seem like the monogamous kind), but it’s not just the thrill of sex with someone so different from his usual pick of women. She takes him more than a little for granted, he has tended more often than not to underestimate her. It's capital-C Complicated. Plus every single episode makes me laugh, makes me gasp or scream, deadly-serious situations veer into humor and back again, and I also enjoy that the UST wasn’t flogged past its sell-by date, but also sex didn’t magically smooth out all of the very real complications between them (and I refuse the showrunner’s suggestion that “King” was the end of the ship – contentiousness and chemistry will keep me fed for a long time).

I love Beth for basically the same reasons why she drives me up the wall: her boldness and recklessness, her giddy joy in being baaaaaaad, her compartmentalization fu, how easily she switches from devoted mom to smooth criminal and liar, how the boundaries of her two lives are starting to blur yet she still seems to fundamentally believe in her own invulnerability. Some consequence of her extracurricular activities or other is going to bite Beth hard one day, and I’m here for it, just as much as I am here for Beth to continue to over-rely on her privilege and just sweetly bulldoze her way through any and all problems. I cheered when she finally admitted that she finds the thrill and the stress of the criminal life fun – it’s not an addiction, it’s a choice willingly made, she’s had control over many of her interactions with Rio. She’s not a victim in this, and Rio’s not her personal villain. Beth wants power and control, but the dirty work still gives her pause – she needs to own all that. Plus I keep thinking of Rio’s line about how nobody’s going to shoot up Beaver Cleaver’s house – Beth’s bubble is going to have to burst somehow, and not in a way she can handwave as no big deal, as she’s done till now, even after shooting Rio! Also, her tackling crime like it’s just any other household chore, keeping funny money in a storage box under her bed and whatnot, delights me.

And I kind of love the way Rio starts out, for both Beth and the audience, as this irresistible-because-dangerous, snarky, dark object of desire (and affection), and then we gradually learn more about him, but there’s still so much to learn. He obviously loves pushing Beth’s buttons, still plays his cards very close, and seems to be working out why the hell he let this suburban lady get under his skin so much. He didn’t need all these complications in his life! He was doing fine before Beth (and Annie and Ruby), and now he runs around Detroit playing mind games and stealing back baby blankies from crack houses! There’s a lot going on with him, and one thing Rio is, he’s the guy who owns his choices in a way Beth still refuses to own hers. My only certainty from the S2 ending is that Rio will mess with Beth in every way he can, in retaliation, whether he’s in jail or not, as well he should. (On that note, let me also mention that I, like Beth, love the edge Rio has, the constant undercurrent or potential for violence – the soft!Rio fanon bores me, unless his soft moments come with the snarky and the sexy and the dangerous and the manipulative because he is so fucking manipulative and I love it, and the putting his own interests first even while wanting Beth around, and the he-has-people-of-his-own-to-look-after, and the not-here-for-your-convenience-alone-Elizabeth, etc.) So yeah, I know that these two may never fully make it work, and it’s highly unlikely they’ll get anything remotely like an HEA, but I’m here for the wild ride and all the ways they can be both great and terrible together.

I wrote most of these prompts before the S2 finale aired, so please feel free to do missing scenes, or divergences, or write a fictional S3, mix and match – whatever works for you, grit and angst and contention or giggles and capers and some contention anyway because come on it’s them! Oh, and about Annie and Ruby: I like them both (Annie especially is a riot even if she’s even more reckless than Beth) and I love the three gals’ banter, so if you want to include them in the story that’s cool, whether as participants in Beth’s schemes or as people pushing against her overconfident recklessness, just please don’t have them only talk about Beth/Rio. As for Dean, the writers go way out of their way to make him sympathetic in late S2, but he’s a weakling and a liar, and while they need to co-parent, he needs to not be married to Beth anymore. Oh, and about Beth and Rio’s respective kids – if you want to include them in whatever you write, that’s fine, but please don’t make the kids a huge or central part of the fic.

Prompts:

-Canon divergence from the S1 cliffhanger: Beth shoots Rio (non-fatally), or Beth shoots Dean to get him to shut up and because she just found out he faked having cancer (he may or may not die), or even Rio takes the gun off Beth and shoots her (flesh wound only), and then what happens? Or how about a divergence from S1E9, where Beth doesn’t interpret “Go home, Elizabeth” as a threat, though her feelings may get hurt by the rejection?

-When the title of the last S2 episode was first announced, I imagined that “King” might mean Rio goes to prison, briefly or not, and then Beth either has to step in and prevent his entire organization from falling apart (and maybe Rio’s lady lawyer helps her out but some of Rio’s other associates and his guys don’t take kindly to her stepping in), or some new big bad moves into Rio’s territory and Beth has to confront them, but they have no desire to indulge her like Rio does or to be her friendly neighborhood gangbanger. Obviously that’s now totally a divergence, but I still want it!

-Speaking of the S2 ending, you can totally do a wild divergence! I’ve read some interesting theories about how that scene wasn’t all it appeared to be (Rio and Beth were in cahoots and he’d taught her how to shoot him non-fatally, Rio wanted to have a video of Beth shooting Turner so he could hold it over her but he can totally work with how it worked out too -- although honestly I’m not even sure S2 ended in Rio’s loft with the cameras! -- etc. etc.), so if you want to play with that or do something entirely different so they never wind up with Turner and a gun at (presumably) Rio’s loft, go right ahead. But at the same time…

-I’m actually OK with the S2 ending, provided of course that Rio lives and, um, eats her heart in vengeance while she realizes she still has a lot to learn, because them crashing into each other is where it’s at. The part that jarred me wasn’t Rio trying to force Beth’s hand in order to reassert dominance and show her she can’t ever get out clean, nor Beth shooting Rio in a moment of rage, but rather her still claiming he’s solely responsible for everything that happened and him calling her a bitch again. So if you want to write me S3, I’m here for it with bells on! Beth as king but uneasy lies the head etc. (not to mention she thinks she’s all badass because she shot Rio but the truth is she still underestimates the reality of the world she’s stepped into)! Beth acting like it’s all good but actually being guilt-ridden about shooting Rio! Her reaction to realizing he’s alive and likely coming after her! Beth’s finally his equal in crime and he’ll have to grudgingly respect that! Hate sex and rival ship-piness! Rebuilding trust – or can they! Beth visiting him in prison and stuff getting complicated! Rio coming after her, whether at Turner’s behest or for himself, and stuff gets even more complicated! Their figuring out they have to work together, for both business reasons and because it seems Turner is still all about getting Beth at any cost and is prioritizing that over getting Rio himself! Gimme all of it! Or you could have Beth shoot Turner, or Rio shoot Turner, or hell Rio shoot her non-fatally then kill Turner… I’m here for it all.

-“Just like we practiced,” he says like it ain’t no thing, but I need to know everything about it! I was starting to wonder whether he’d ever teach her like he said he would… One possible suggestion: that time Dean let those idiots steal Beth’s money, and she’s hanging with Rio in her backyard arguing about the proper word for underpants, they just got back from early morning target practice. Or how about a 5+1 story, with the +1 possibly being the S2 ending?

-Or, have Beth do one of her “I did something”s to Rio as the starting point of an adventure.

-When they’re talking outside of Jane’s dance recital, it becomes pretty clear that Rio and Beth have used absolutely all of her kids’ activities and appointments as a cover for “business meetings,” or at least he’s had to figure out her schedule pretty well in order to find her. What would their burner-phone calls or text exchanges look like when they need to arrange a meetup, with Beth needing to reschedule or running late, and Rio having limited reserves of time and patience, despite indulging her on the whole? And what if the tables turned sometime, because it’s not like his kid doesn’t have dentist’s appointments and playdates and whatnot? Plus wouldn’t Rio hanging around the dentist’s and princess birthday parties and suchlike attract at least some attention?

-Rio’s still angry and distrustful of Beth after S2E9 – both for trying to bail from the business and for using him as she did for sex and solace – but something or other happens and Beth’s the only person he can go to when his operation gets blown or raided by the Feds, or someone nearly kills him, or some other shit goes down. Now they’re basically on the lam together, and there are thrills, chases, building back trust, snark, sex… Plus it would be nice if he actually took the time to teach her, like he said he would back in S2E2, instead of blowing her off or just assuming she’ll have the common sense not to, say, walk into crack dens unarmed.

-Or flip that around: Beth handles a ‘book club’ situation her way (think Boomer in the treehouse, funny money under the bed, Googling how to kill someone or how to remove blood stains from carpet, burying a dead body in the backyard) and Rio needs to roll with it. The humor potential is really high here. Also I don’t think Rio’s ever witnessed Beth’s knack for lying and spinning some story on the spot, and he should, his reaction would be interesting to witness.

-Or how about if Beth had actually told Rio about the Dean situation in S2E9, and they could still get laid (oh please!) but they could also figure out a way to handle Dean and Turner and everything together. You know, actually communicate and be awesome rather than terrible together?

-Capers! The plotting, stealing stuff, and chases kind, not the kind you eat. I love this show’s silly, this-shouldn’t-work-and-they-make-beginner-mistakes capers, like the two grocery store stickups or the payday loan robbery/kidnapping. I’d be down for Annie and Ruby to play a big part, and if Rio were involved in the planning and execution, things probably wouldn’t go too pear-shaped, but you never know – the gals’ tendency to improvise is a wild card. Or they plan and execute a caper of their own, something goes sideways, and they need Rio to help them, which he doesn’t do for free or without some serious snark and psychological payback (remember when they discussed why Rio’s having them kill Boomer, and Beth automatically said “to torture me”? Yeah.)

-Moments when shit isn’t actively hitting the fan and they can just relax at the bar or the backyard picnic table, have a drink and shoot the breeze, flirt and snark – and maybe even slow dance one time. (This might work especially well as a 5+1 story, if you’re that way inclined.)

-Rio has a job for Beth, and for once she doesn’t go off script – but something goes wrong anyway. A double cross, or a shootout, or a police ambush, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When she can’t rely on her charm and knack for lying to get her out of a jam, but has to follow Rio’s lead and/or play by the rules of his world whether she likes it or not, how does Beth handle the situation, not by simply bending everything to her will so she can keep everything nice and neat and just the right amount of dangerous to thrill but not inconvenience her? Basically, what would have to happen for Beth to finally stop calling it ‘book club’ and accept what Rio told her ages ago: she’s a criminal who also happens to be a mom, and she needs to act like it?

-On that note, I kind of want Beth to have to kill someone (for real, because she so did not kill Rio gimme a break). Not someone like Annie, or Ruby, or Stan. A business rival of her and Rio’s, or a cop/Fed that’s on their tail, or Mary Pat, or a key witness against Rio, or hell even Dean (oh the angst! The guilt Beth would feel!), so long as it wasn’t under duress like the S1 cliffhanger or spur of the moment like when Mary Pat killed Boomer. Beth was ready to blow away Boomer back of the Fine ‘n’ Frugal that one time. I want her to have to finally cross boundaries she’s been able to dodge or have someone else cross for her till now, and really get her hands dirty, and deal with all the moral iffiness of it but also the full implications of what being a boss bitch requires, and what it means to be squarely on Rio’s side of the fence.

-These two navigate some pretty deep waters without ever spelling out what this thing between them is, but it is very clearly A Thing. Gestures can speak louder than words, like when Rio got Jane’s dubby back and sent it to Beth so she’d know it’s from him, but he could also deny it if he wanted to. What kind of gesture could Beth make to make clear that she’s in, in every sense of the word, even if naming what all she’s in would be too complicated, scary and/or dangerous?

-The game of twenty questions in Rio’s loft turns out porny when she refuses to leave when told, and none of their issues get resolved thereby, but still. Things turn porny, and probably emotional because these two have always sucked about separating business from everything else that’s between them, ‘nuff said.

-Tell me exactly what all they did (and thought and felt) in Beth’s bedroom between that swoony kiss and Beth’s post-coital kiss-off. Exactly.

-Beth and Dean’s divorce is finalized and/or Beth decides to grant Dean primary custody (because Dean is a weakling and a douche, but he was right about Beth’s other life endangering the family), and then she calls Rio looking for a distraction or to convince herself she’s totally fine about such a massive and irrevocable change in her life. Last time she pulled a stunt like that, they wound up in her bedroom, and everything was vulnerable and intense, and then feelings got hurt, and trust isn’t easy to rebuild. What happens this time?

-We’ve seen Rio’s life through Beth’s eyes – how does her life, including her ‘book club’ shenanigans look like from Rio’s world? Extra double-dipped brownie points if Beth gets to see how her life looks from the other side.

-One contrast between them I enjoy especially is the differences in how they speak, and I would love to see that played up in fic, which is all about words. Or, for an actual prompt: a situation arises in which Beth has to (maybe badly, maybe not) imitate Rio’s way of speaking, or vice versa.

-As amusing as I find the idea of his actual name being something as preppy as Christopher, let’s say that’s not Rio’s real name either. What is it, and under what circumstances might Beth learn it? And under what circumstances might she call him it, given that she’s never yet even called him Rio to his face, and he of course always uses her full name as both a goad and a verbal caress?

-Beth’s fantasy about Rio smashing up her bedroom is my favorite scene of the entire show so far (followed closely by their confrontation in Rio’s loft, the resolution of the S1 cliffhanger, and the zinger-filled food-court scene with the three gals pitching their big-box-store money-laundering idea to Rio). Beth’s fantasy is both funny and sexy, says tons about what she finds attractive about him, and even taps into the inherent ridiculousness of sexual fantasies without parodying it. What other fantasies does she have about him? What fantasies does he have about her? I’d be all for a (parallel) masturbation fic too!

-“Damn, mami, you’re good at this.” Please work that line into a fic and have it refer to a porny or non-porny situation (or both!).

-Enforced road trip! Crime stuff happens, neither Rio nor Beth are too keen on the idea except they’re both intrigued by the possibilities, they have to get in a car together and go chasing a pill shipment or money gone astray or whathaveyou, and there’s playing the silent game as well as deep conversations, roadside diners and motels, gas stations and shootouts, actual communication (or not – they can keep avoiding important conversations, that works too) and orgasms. Gimme!

-Rio leaves the country to escape the long arm of the law, and Beth goes after him even though she’s safe, and he’s not necessarily thrilled to see her at first. Exotic travel, probably-criminal shenanigans, and all kinds of sexiness ensue. (Look, when she got out of the business in S2, she acted like she couldn’t imagine how Rio would cope without having her around to launder his money and mess his shit up. If she thought she might never see him again, she’d panic, make her kids lunches and leave Dean an activities calendar for the foreseeable, throw some stuff in a wheelie bag, and take off at a moment’s notice.)

-While I’ll happily read whatever porn you might decide to write for them, I have a bit of a craving for one scenario: within an established relationship (whether they call it that, or more likely continue to not define it but they both accept that sex is something that’s going to happen regularly between them going forward, or even them being enemies/business rivals after S2 but still fucking occasionally), first-time anal sex. I can’t imagine it’s something Beth has done much, or ever, but she has a bold streak a mile wide, does our Beth, and I also can’t imagine it could be anything less than very emotional as well as scorching hot with these two involved.

-An exception to my blanket DNW about unrelated AUs: Beth and Rio in a time loop/Russian Doll-type scenario (so many possibilities to fuck up – or just fuck – but also to gradually (re)build trust) or Beth and Rio in a zombie apocalypse. For the latter, let’s assume everyone’s kids are safe, don’t let Annie, Ruby, or Stan die, Dean can die or not. I just really want Rio and Beth to have to rely on each other when it’s life and death and probable end of the world, despite all their issues and differences.

Firefly (TV)

Jayne Cobb/River Tam

Jayne Cobb/Saffron

Opposites attracting - or should I say colliding (and being really annoyed about it), but also more-similar-than-they-seem-at-first colliding! Capers! Either of the women out-deviousing Jayne, whether he realizes it or not, even as he’s trying to out-devious them. The humor and/or crack potential is especially high here.

For Jayne/River, I can see a lot of potential in accidental/fake marriage, woke up married, and marriage of convenience tropes. Pair that big, not-always-lovable lug Jayne with Ultimate Cloudcuckoolander with a dark and troubled past River, and sparks are bound to fly. If you can find a way to mix in some sort of a caper – either involving the Firefly crew’s ongoing criminal shenanigans or the Tams’ flight from the Alliance – that would be especially sweet. They’re doing it in order to be able to claim an inheritance, or to pull off a job, or even to protect River (and Jayne says he just wants a payday).

For Jayne/Saffron, I’m thinking of something post-canon when they meet again, and we get to see even more of Saffron’s mad skills and maybe learn a bit more about her, and Jayne is in waaaaay over his head - but he kinda likes it. At least Saffron is a handful *waggles eyebrows* in a different way from Mal and Zoe’s constant slight distrust of Jayne.

Jayne flirting with betraying his new mate has potential, and the woman getting the upper hand seems a given in that dynamic (poor Jayne will live in a constant state of not knowing what hit him).

Likes:

I love irony, snark, humor as well as angst arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in, linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories, hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, worldbuilding, spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who can get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, kinks, incest, underage, genderswap/genderbent characters, xeno, non-/dub-con, torture and abuse (this and non-/dub-con can be mentioned if the story needs it, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it), dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore/blood and come are fine), toilet humor, character bashing, issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons, unrequested ships, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (the exception is Laura Moon in American Gods dying so she can become undead), serious illness or injury, pregnancy and children, holiday or wedding setting/theme, secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job, reference to RL current events, 1st/2nd person POV, unrequested crossovers or fusions, AUs which have nothing to do with canon

#dear author letter #het swap 2019

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miss-m-calling · 5 years

Text

Rare Pairs Exchange 2019 letter

Requests:

Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney (American Gods TV)

Miranda Barlow/John Silver (Black Sails)

Oliver Baumer/Eric Love (Starred Up 2013 movie)

Dear writer,

Hello and thank you for writing for me. I’m very excited to read whatever you come up with.

Requests:

American Gods (TV)

Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney

I ship it. Yes I do. They had me at “gimme-my-coin-dead-wife”-flicks-him-into-wall. The snarky road trip was the best thing I never knew I wanted until it happened, and I adored every second of it, not to mention the upped shippiness in S2. They’re both such assholes and so fascinating, even if they start to mellow toward each other a bit, and all the gods/magic/resurrection stuff swirling around them begs to be explored further. Also I love love love how their dynamic is about equal parts spikiness, pathos, and humor (they’re funny! and the canon doesn’t shy away from putting them in ludicrous situations), and it weaves seamlessly between those three. Plus she’s half his size yet can and does beat him up with literally one finger, and then there’s the angst of he having killed her, feeling really guilty about it, and then bringing her back. And the way that their New Orleans adventure makes clear they have feelings for each other (S1 was more one-sided Sweeney->Laura) but neither wants to admit it. And and and… yeah, I just love them.

-Wednesday’s big war finally comes, and “don’t you dare die on me [again], you asshole” is a line either Sweeney or Laura (or both) might say to each other.

-All the petty, ridiculous ways in which Sweeney’s bad luck manifests itself make me laugh (can’t help it, won’t even try), and I’m down for more variations on that theme.

-My perfect AG spinoff would basically be Sweeney and Laura tooling around America, looking to get her resurrected (whether they succeed or not is up to you), stealing ever more ridiculous vehicles, arguing/fighting and having those pesky moments where vulnerability and genuineness creep in – and fucking. So yessiree I’d be down for porn, including “it’s technically necrophilia/zombiesex” porn, including a canon-divergent first time, or a second/later time after they had their first time in NOLA in canon.

Black Sails

Miranda Barlow/John Silver

Prompts:

-Fucking someone is easy. Sleeping the night through next to that person is hard.

-Miranda discovers she likes to get her fingers in Silver’s hair during sex, both gently and not. He likes it too, which is not to say he’ll necessarily admit he likes it.

Starred Up

Oliver Baumer/Eric Love

Yes I do ship it, I do, I do!

Prompts:

-An emergency in the prison requires a lock-down, so Oliver gets temporarily stuck in Eric’s cell or another room with only Eric for company. Things get porny and/or emotional.

Likes:

I love irony, snark, humor as well as angst arising from the characters rather than the plot crowbaring it in, linear, non-linear, and 5+1 stories, hopeful endings, happy endings, bittersweet endings, worldbuilding, spiky characters who keep their jagged edges and spikiness in adversity as well as when their lives are going well, square-peg-in-round-hole characters, characters who are their own worst enemies as well as those who can get over themselves when the occasion calls for it, characters with conflicting values which may or may not be reconciled/resolved, characters who treat each other with respect and as equals even if they hate/annoy/can’t stand/love to dislike each other.

DNWs:

MPREG, A/B/O, knotting, D/s, kinks, incest, underage, genderswap/genderbent characters, xeno, non-/dub-con, torture and abuse (this and non-/dub-con can be mentioned if the story needs it, but please don’t dwell on it in loving detail or subject any of my requested characters to it), dwelling on bodily fluids (mentions of gore/blood and come are fine), toilet humor, character bashing, issuefic, gender/sexuality/race/ethnicity/religion/ability/identity headcanons, unrequested ships, soulmates and soul marks, major character death (the exception is Laura Moon in American Gods dying so she can become undead), serious illness or injury, pregnancy and children, holiday or wedding setting/theme, secondary characters shipping the main pair like it’s their job, reference to RL current events, 1st/2nd person POV, unrequested crossovers or fusions, AUs which have nothing to do with canon

#dear author letter #rare pairs exchange

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