whynot | MULTIFANDOM POST OF FLAIL

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MULTIFANDOM POST OF FLAIL

1. Dirty Sexy Money. UGH. I am going through Season 1 of Dirty Sexy Money and I HATE HER. I HATE HER SO MUCH. I'm on Episode 7 and I don't understand why she is being set up to be the forbidden romantic interest of the married main character when there is NOTHING LIKEABLE ABOUT HER. It's just confusing storytelling. I thought Karen was written to be annoying on purpose and that the viewer to hate her, but now she is desired by the moral center of the show? I don't understand why ANYONE would desire Karen Darling, want to redeem her, or write fic about her explaining why she is the way she is. If I look into her head, I would find, "I fail at life because I never had to work at anything."

. The rest of the characters are okay I guess, though I ADORE the twins. (Where is the Jeremy/Juliet fic, guys??) I may or may have not drabbled Jeremy&Juliet when I was bored in class.

2. I kind of miss writing in a fandom that's set in the present day, 'cos then I can just let loose with dialogue and references and not have to check whether they're anachronistic or not. I would maybe minimize moments of "Wait, did I just accidentally write Christian allegory?" I want to write about airport lounges, Greyhound buses, fast food, and falling asleep in front of the TV.

I pretty much should just start writing originals again and write WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT.

3. The Secret Garden. Thoughts on Susan Moody's Return to the Secret Garden are

It was disappointing. I'm not surprised that it is, but I hoped it wouldn't be.

Things I Like
- BOTH times when Mary and Dickon finally have sex. The build-up was more or less effective enough to make me think "OMG JUST FUCK ALREADY!" MARY/DICKON ZOMG.
- Mary being initially confounded by sex
- Mary being disillusioned in India (Basil included)
- Colin having a new aspiration every week

Things That Could've Been Better Handled, But Wasn't, With Less Than Compelling Results
- Sociopolitical commentary on the World Wars and class struggle. She was trying to put The Secret Garden in a context of the British and European politics of its day. I'm down for putting canon in a new context, 'cos hey, that's what fic is all about, but Moody's execution just felt forced.
- Barney whathisname, the soldier who had a crush on Mary's mother, channeling his lust to Mary. Again with the feeling forced.
- Mary's child being a Marty Stu, ugh.

Good ideas but inconsistent writing quality. 6.5/10!

. In short, MARY/DICKON 4EVAAAAAAAAA. To conclude,

It was nearly three months since the telegram had arrived announcing that Dickon was missing and there had been no further news. She knew Colin was still mourning him: so, indeed, was she. But she needed a change. Everything had been so dreary while the war dragged on. For far too long she had felt as old as the moors round Misselthwaite, and the limited chances for gaiety offered by the Yorkshire social scene only added to that feeling. But she was nearly nineteen and she wanted to be young, to be like the girls whose exploits she read about in the society pages of the newspapers, the girls who were rebelling against the stuffy conventions of their parents, who belonged to the smart sets, like those who surrounded the Prince of Wales or Lady Diana Cooper. She longed to smoke Turkish cigarettes and bob her hair and dance till dawn in smoky basement night-clubs. When she had finally understood that Dickon was lost to them, she had known she would mourn him for the rest of her life. Even now, she was pierced by sadness as sharp and cold as an icicle whenever she thought of him. And yet, with the war over, life was slowly beginning to return to some kind of normality, and with a certain surprise, she was realizing that there were limits to how much time a person could spend being grief-stricken.

OH SUSAN.

4. Heroes. I just watched the new Heroes and MAN, everyone is TOTALLY SEXING EACH OTHER. TOTALLY. Especially all of the Petrellis (including Claire), though that's nothing new. I mean, it pretty much begins with Peter and Claire sexing, but eventually it gets to Peter and Nathan sexing because IT ALWAYS DOES.

I approve of Mohinder/Maya. I APPROVE OF MOHINDER. Someone break me off a piece of THAT, omg. I always knew you had it in you. You were already too pretty for words, AND THEN YOU TOOK OFF YOUR SHIRT. AND I DIED. MOHINDER, YOU ARE TOO HOT FOR WORDS. Also, your superpower is that you are Spiderman, lolz.

OH, AND THEN THERE IS HIRO AND ANDO. Who compare themselves to Batman and Robin. I MEAN, COME ON.

Everyone on Heroes <333333333!!!! Except Claire, who is dumb as a post.

, yeah. I'm tempted to get sucked into the Heroes fandom, but what I REALLY should be doing is homework.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

caspiANNE? i like caspia. in the badfic version, she would be nicknamed CASSIE. oh i think there would be sex somewhere. there always is. the uselessness of a female and her fuckability aren't mutually exclusive! lessons from college. SIGH.

WHAT IF ASLAN WAS A LIONESS? what would jadis shave and wear around her neck into battle then?? what if lucy was a hermaphrodite?! would she be queen still or king, or what? i lean towards QUING LUCY.

i has ur crack.

Then I started thinking about Edmund/Susan.
hmm, yes, tell me more... *STEEPLES FINGERS*

If Caspian was a girl, she would be a damsel in distress. (Oh, lord, why can I not write strong women? Wait.)

*puts the crack away* (Crack is all about CHARACTERIZATION. If one is firmly enough in their characters' heads, they can put them in any situation. This I have learned from SGA fandom, home of the crackiest crack in the known universe. GIRL SCOUT COOKIE AU.)

I have not yet thought of a situation, but it begins with Susan kissing Peter goodbye at the train station when he's getting shipped off for THE WAR. I do not know how this ends in Susan and Edmund having sex, but somehow it does.

GASP. YOU SHOULD WRITE THAT. YES.

AND LIKE she absorbs the headlines about the war, reads as many of the articles about it as she can and still talks about her older brother like he'll be home by christmas. edmund doesn't tell her the statistics of survival in the raf because he knows she knows, wonders at how easily she slips into pretending.

AND in her head she thinks "peter, peter" but it's not his body in her arms, and it hasn't been for a while, and things are changing, always changing.

WHOOPS I PETER/SUSAN-ED.

they didn't have newspapers in narnia and maybe that was a blessing because for all this talk of progress and modernity, susan finds herself a prisoner to the speed of information, bombarded by casualty rates and speeches and photographs and peter's somewhere in the middle of all that. his letters are frustratingly concise and she tries to find him in the propaganda until edmund tugs the paper from her hands or turns the wireless off. some nights she would snap at him for doing so, some nights she is just resigned.

"things are changing," she says, and edmund supposes she's right, though he's not sure whether she's talking about the war, themselves, the world.

AND LIKE "i'm running out of patience with her," he confesses to lucy, who just gives him a Look. purses her lips and rolls her eyes.

EDMUND/SUSAN. alcohol may or may not be involved. not as strong and fragrant as narnian wines, but it'll do, it'll do.

ahahaha what do you need me for? and they are both, well, yes, we're saying goodbye to him as he goes off to war, but we've done that a thousand times before. only difference is that this time not a one of us is going with him, and we don't know who's watching his back. but they can't tell their parents back. and edmund sits up nights with his hands buried in his hair, wishing he had peter's back the way he should, the way he always did. there are four of them for a reason.

susan throws a teapot at the wall and it shatters, streaking oolang across the wallpaper and china across the carpet. edmund catches her arms as she sinks down to the floor, the tears running freely down her face for the first time.

he holds her the way she used to wish someone would hold her, after they'd been shoved ingloriously out of narnia and back to the professor's. he kisses her forehead, and she can feel the tension in his body, because -- and she realizes belatedly, she's been selfish, selfish -- peter's his brother too and he's always been there for peter, but this time he can't follow peter to war for another two years, and by then it may be too late.

she kisses him, or tries to, and edmund turns his face away so that her lips brush his cheek instead of his mouth. of course, she thinks in some part of her mind, he's been here with peter. "i want," she tries to say, but the words are tangled up in each other; she doesn't know what language she's speaking.

"what do you want?" edmund says, and his voice is gentle. he's maddeningly calm. she hates him for it, a little bit.

"i want to go home," susan bursts out before she can help herself, "oh, god, i want to go home, i want things to be normal, i want --" she stops abruptly. "you," she finishes eventually, aware of edmund's calm gaze on her. "you're home."

"not quite," edmund replies.

"close enough," susan says, and the bitterness in her voice shocks her.

help help why do my capital letters go away! i need them!

FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIL

it's all very well to say home, it's all very well to say love, and live, those big big words, but she doesn't see what things are anymore. just what things are not. the holes in her heart are of a specific shape and they can't get filled quite right. round pegs, square holes.

she shares her cigarettes with edmund, shares walks with him, shares her skin, her flask (it was peter's -- he didn't take it with him to the raf), her lips and occasionally her solitude. they rarely talk about peter anymore and barely even mention narnia, because by now they both know better. there is a time and place for that, a season for all things: someday he will go back to accusing susan of forgetting, but it's obvious to him that right now she's doing nothing but remembering.

ALL YOUR CAPITAL LETTERS ARE BELONG TO MEEEEEE 'cos i've been experiencing a dearth of capitals here myself.

SO.

edmund can't stop himself wondering, "does she kiss peter like this? does she let peter touch her like this? does peter leave afterwards or wait for her to fall asleep?" and he suspects that if he were still an adult he wouldn't get caught up in such questions and would be better at taking things for what they are. but he's young again, and here in england there's more of peter's little brother in edmund than there ever was when he had been king edmund of the western wood, duke of lantern waste. and now peter's gone off to war, which isn't unusual, but edmund isn't at his side, which is. with peter gone, the chains of comparison are heavier and more clearly defined. absence has allowed abstraction to solidify, and edmund has in his mind a muddled image of a high king and a pilot and a sword and a gun and a plane and a throne and the way winter melts into spring.

it is not a resentful comparison that he makes -- edmund is merely aware. of his brother, far away. of his sister, entwined around him, making love like they are both someone else.

+

it's like how, back in narnia, he and susan had been the counterweight to peter and lucy's imperious joy. if peter and lucy were waterfalls and bubbling brooks, edmund and susan were deep water, still and dark. in some ways, edmund suspects that he and susan grew up to be too similar to be truly close, but there had been an understanding between them at least. an appreciation of efficiency and having both feet on the ground while lucy laughed barefoot with satyrs and peter walked steeped in glory and living legend.

but they are all growing up again, and this time who knows how they'll turn out.

COULDN'T RESIST.

*flails back*

it's funny, isn't it, how intertwined they are with each other. they've all lived in each other's pockets for so long, even when they were leagues away from each other or on opposite sides of oceans, that they know each other, breath and body and soul. but here, in england, that fades, except in all the ways it doesn't.

she knows, and she isn't bitter about it or angry; it is is simply a fact, that it's peter they all revolve around, peter who keeps them together and whole. peter has had his hands on edmund and her hands on him, and now she and edmund are -- together, as if they're trying to fill the hole of peter's absence with their own presence. there are four of them, but lucy has forgotten too much (and susan simultaneously envies and pities her this) and peter is gone with the setting sun and the turning of seasons. summer ended when he left, mouth hard against hers at the train station when their parents weren't looking (or maybe they were; it doesn't matter and she doesn't care), and the irony of it (again; whose joke is it now? their summer, having begun a thousand years ago, is always ending) would make her laugh if she remembered how.

they both have to leave to go to school, and that makes it easier and harder all at once, because most of the other girls know what she means. they have brothers or fathers or sweethearts at war too, and there is an air of waiting. once they're done, they will be part of the war, part of the world.

she comes home for christmas and edmund's there. she kisses his cheek like she would peter's, but edmund turns his face away, expression grim and set. "susan --" he says, and puts the letter in her hand.

it's addressed to him (of course it is; peter doesn't trust their parents and probably never will again. that's gone with their long-ago childhood), and for a moment, looking at it, the letters make no sense. then

your brother is missing as a result of air operations last night

and there's more, but she's too busy screaming to read it.

WHAT WHAT. WHAT HAPPENED?! is it that like there was lightning and thunder, except it's not, it's just enemy fire and he's in the middle of it and, as he hurtles into the darkness, he calls out his sibling's name and won't remember which?

also: their summer, having begun a thousand years ago, is always ending
FAVORITE LINE

"i," susan declares, "am tired of losing things."
"at least," lucy says to edmund later, "she is admitting that there was something to lose."

perhaps i shan't tell you! maybe peter will just be missing in action FOREVER. except for the time he gets hit by that train, of course. there is that.

he gets shot down in burma, over a tropical forest. (let us hope my geography and history do not contradict each other.) he is missing for three weeks.

edmund punches a hole through the wall and snaps back at their mother when she corrects hiim for it. susan thinks that perhaps their parents are bitter about the fact peter addresses all his letters to edmund and that the telegram and the letter from his command both came to edmund, not to them.

"why the hell should i listen to you?" edmund snarls and storms out the door, out into the snow. lucy follows, throwing an apologetic look over her shoulder, but her loyalty, like edmund's (like susan's) is to peter and narnia, not to their parents and england.

"susan, darling --" their mother begins. their father is in the kitchen calling all his old friends, trying to find out anything, even though he, out of all of them, knows how futile such searches will be.

she should stop. she should be susan the good daughter, the sweet, pretty one. the good child. but it's queen susan heartsbane of narnia who rises and pushes past without a word, the letter crumpled outside as she goes outside into the snow. it's familiar. they've been here before, three of them, with one missing.

they don't know where peter is stationed, or where he went missing, or if --

"we don't owe you anything," she says out loud. "what did you ever give us that you have to take something in exchange?"

edmund can't even punch the nearest tree, just stand next to it with his fists clenched at his sides, breath rising in front of him. can't, won't, shouldn't. used to be the trees hit back.

HOLY JESUS DO YOU GUYS DO THIS IN COMMENTS ALL THE TIME? IF SO I NEED TO LURK A LOT MORE THAN USUAL.

my favorite is a particularly epic peter/susan AU (http://bedlamsbard.livejournal.com/270584.html?thread=1636856#t1636856) where susan stops aging and is an fbi agent in the present day, and someone brings peter back from the dead for nefarious reasons. the original idea is bedlam's, i just play there sometimes. she would say it's not TECHNICALLY an AU, but she has been writing werewolf!pevensies and girl!peter so TRUST HER AT YOUR OWN RISK.

i am also inordinately fond of the wild west AU (http://lassiterfics.livejournal.com/60712.html?thread=705576#t705576).

It is NOT technically an AU. It is just futurefic! And also a crossover, but that comes later.

Mmm, Susan/Tony Stark. He will flirt with her outrageously and she'll laugh, in ordinately pleased at just being liked for herself. It's nice, to not be so serious all the time. And she knows the case is serious -- she's here under General Fury's orders -- but Tony is happy to show her that it doesn't have to be, and that sometimes it can even be fun.

a game for the whole family!

twoskeletons.livejournal.com - 2008-09-30 04:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: a game for the whole family!

bedlamsbard.livejournal.com - 2008-09-30 04:18 (UTC) - Expand

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doesn't take much to light my fire

Re: doesn't take much to light my fire

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and the last thing written is the beginning OF COURSE

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um, things on my mind.

Re: um, things on my mind.

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