mizzy | Ooh, a meme!

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meme

Ooh, a meme!

C'mon, guys, I've been pretty good, no memes for a while, and this one can't be much work (I don't think I'll have anything much people would be interested in), so let's goooo for it.

Ganked from

lightgetsin.

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic is here or here.

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"You remember what happened in here." Reilly kept her hands flat on the table and stared at Nate. The guards had restrained him. There was a dead expression in Nate's eyes that she rather empathised with. It was about all she could empathise with nowadays.

"I remember." He shook his head and stared blankly at the wall before his gaze moved to hers. "Paul Brody was about to shoot himself. Your guys shot me in the shoulder. When I woke up you tortured me for years and then I escaped."

"We let you go, Mr. Haines."

"That's not my name," Nate snapped, and then faltered.

"It is your name, Mr. Haines."

"Why would you let me go?" Haines asked then, looking weary, like he didn't expect an answer to the question.

"As an experiment. We aimed to create a weapon in this room."

"I don't understand, why-" Haines started, and then faltered. "I talked Brody into Apoptosis. My example made him sacrifice himself." He looked up at her, eyes wide. "I'm the weapon you trained in this room."

"Correct. Thanks to you, we have four people now willing to give up their lives in order to save you. You're very effective, Mr. Haines. Thank you." Reilly pushed herself to her feet and moved to the door. A rattle of chains proved they hadn't quite broken him as much as Phillips thought they would. There was still life in there. Still a fight. Perhaps she wouldn't have to have him executed after all.

"Kill me instead," Haines insisted, his voice low and persuasive. There, Reilly thought with a cavalier briskness which shocked even her, that's how he does it. How he makes people willing to walk into hell to protect him. "Please!" He was shouting now. "Kill me instead!"

"Really, Mr. Haines." Reilly paused at the door, and turns back, switching off her emotions as she had done every minute of her life since joining the MK-ULTRA program. "That would defeat the purpose. Why kill the golden goose?"

"Fuck you," Haines screamed, "fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you fucking bitch-"

Haines' profanities were cut off by the close of the door. She glanced impassively at one of the monitors as he started yanking against the chains uselessly, again and again.

Reilly sighed and started the next phase into motion, sending Haines into solitary confinement until he was ready again. Haines would rant and rave. He did that last time. He screamed and cried for months. Reilly supervised him the whole time. She is sure it will happen that way again.

Ahaha, you know, when this popped up in my inbox I had no clue what it was. That's a great start.

OH HELLO KILLING ROOM CROSSOVER.

I love the film Killing Room up to a point. And that point is mostly that the end makes no sense, why would you do that to the ending of a film that had such promise? ugh. But then, Haines in the film probably deserved the end he got.
BUT, if Haines was Nate Ford (or, Haines became Nate Ford after years of government programming) - that adds in an extra element. Which I used to be CREEPY. \o/

So, basically, what makes it super creepy, is that after all the work Nate's done, providing leverage, turning bad guys into good guys, the government will now swoop in, use the team for evil, and use Nate himself as leverage.

NEAT CYCLE OF CREEPY.

There's this guy in his AA program that Nate is pretty sure is not an alcoholic. He looks too healthy for a start, his young skin taut over his angled frame. He doesn't mainline coffee in the breaks like the rest of them. He's way too alert. He doesn't fidget, and his eyes don't trail the exits, plotting out the route to the nearest 7/11.

The next time their group leader Patrick suggests they buddy up, to sponsor each other, Nate gravitates to him. He doesn't need a sponsor. He needs a mystery to concentrate on, something to let his mind wander through while his body wants it to think about drinking, and the young man is it.

Nate doesn't get much out of him, apart from his name: Alec. That, and the way he swigs soda. Identical to the way Nate can used to down bourbon. So maybe Nate's just making mysteries up in his head.

So, you know this part was Fight Club inspired, yes?

Basically, in this AU, Nate passed out before Dubenich could recruit him. So in the warehouse, Dubenich's scheme mostly worked. He ended up hiring Marcus Starke as his mastermind. He brought along Sophie. In the warehouse explosion, Starke died in Hardison and Eliot's arms. Instead of staying behind, Hardison and Eliot ran, leaving Sophie and Parker caught by the police and imprisoned.

Hardison got a little attached to his new crew (didn't know what he wanted, but found out what he needed - a family), and the guilt he felt for running (and leaving Parker), but not running soon enough (Starke) collided in his head. Hardison had never seen someone die. Hadn't realised past computer screens of data that real people were always on the other end of his crimes.

Without computer crime though, he's lost, doesn't know what to do. He ends up marathon watching movies in the dark, and watches Fight Club, and wonders if Marla is onto something.

And she is. At AA, Hardison feels he can confess for his crimes, even if it's not the real crimes he's confessing. He feels a little better, but the guilt is still eating him up.

Nate here knows how a real alcoholic would behave, and Alec isn't it. It makes him a mystery, and if Nate thinks about a mystery he doesn't have to think about the alcohol. But Nate's never felt like he's had a solid grip on the world since Sam died, so he even second guesses himself about Hardison, even though he has a list of concrete clues. He's lost.

Hardison uses Alec as his name because he's trying to distance himself from Hardison, the one who saw a man die from something he thinks is his own fault (should have thought quicker, should have seen more). Hardison did all that bad stuff; Alec's someone new.

This explanation makes the story itself even better. Alec would totally get an idea like that from Fight Club, wouldn't he? Especially since if he's marathoning movies he would probably already be identifying with the Narrator...

I really really like this story. <3

http://archiveofourown.org/works/213756/chapters/320677

Oh, gosh, I- that is way more than 500 words.

I don't even know. It's of course a blatant tribute to the Firefly Notes on a Fridge - http://www.webcomicsnation.com/serenitytales/st_passingnotes/series.php - except I don't think I stole any of the jokes.

My favourite joke?

Um, the powerpoint chapter, that was based on all the stupid powerpoints going around tumblr. I think Sophie likes powerpoints. They're in her technical range, and she can be dramatic reading them out, and Hardison hates powerpoints. Sophie still genuinely doesn't know why it's not animated when printed out.

Nate, Nate really likes them writing on his fridge, or he wouldn't keep sticking paper up, or he'd pull it all down. He's making a scrapbook of them all.

I think there should be a lot more in-jokes in Leverage, (there are a few - very distinctive things, dammit hardison, seriously, etc. - but there aren't as many as I would expect) so I add in-jokes galore to the fic because all the in-jokes happen offscreen in my head. So Sophie's wig, Hardison's "don't touch my soda" when the only person who does is Eliot when he's making a point, the memes, Nate's alcohol + Sophie's shoes, it's all repetitive themes to tie them together.

IDK, there's more in the works, of course. I'll probably wait til the first hiatus, so I can make some season 5 jokes (I already have a thousand Princess Bridge ones because of the first ep of the season, and Parker wants a turtle now.)

I confess, I haven't read a great deal of your fic - we seem to have different tastes in pairings and all, but this? This I want explanation for, because of its awesomeness ;)

"Don't you want to see?" Mr. Gold reaches into his pocket, and Sarah tenses, unconsciously reaching for her fork just in case, but Mr. Gold doesn't pull out a gun. Sarah needs to sort out her overactive imagination. It's not a weapon at all. It's... three crystal balls. Mr. Gold holds out his palm towards her, the three spheres spinning on his palm easily. "Maybe you can learn some tricks. Dazzle the kids."

Sarah's halfway through holding her hand out for them, almost entranced by the way the light catches them. And then a memory takes hold of her, reminding her what she's running from - the rest of the memories. Staying in that house which her father and stepmom grudgingly sold her was too much. Seeing Toby regularly was too much. It was all a reminder of what she had to fear in life.

Jareth never left her alone. Not for long.

And maybe this Mr. Gold isn't Jareth. Maybe he doesn't even know the Goblin King. Maybe this is a genuine offer of a trinket, something innocent.

But Sarah's learned never to take deals at face value.

No one wants nothing for something.

She pulls her hand back. "No. No thank you." She swallows. Mr. Gold's face freezes, like he's not expecting it. There's something familiar about his face. Something which reminds her painfully of Jareth. "I don't deal with people like you. You always want more than anyone should ever give."

"Merely a trifle," Mr. Gold protests, but his voice is thinner now, and they can both hear the lie in it. He pauses. Then settles back in the chair with a laugh. "You've had dealings with my kind before."

Sarah doesn't say anything, but her silence is as much of an answer as anything. "I guess so," she says, because she's not sure what Mr. Gold's type is.

"I could keep him off your back," Mr. Gold says, perceptively. "The way you run," he explains, "small town to small town? No one escapes an army like that. No, you're escaping a singular someone. And I can keep him off your back permanently." He smiles, showing his teeth. "What do you say?"

"Same thing I told him." Sarah pushes back from the table, and looks down at him coolly. "You have no power over me."

He shrinks back from the words, and Sarah smiles, coldly. "Good night, Mr. Gold."

She grabs her newspaper and stalks out of the cafe, leaving it far behind. She'll leave Storybrooke. She doesn't belong, after all. But maybe she'll settle down in the next place. Her words and will are apparently weapon enough for all the evil characters out there.

This is one of the fics that I didn't quite know what I wanted from it, apart from this final exchange with Sarah and Mr. Gold. Mr. Gold is such a delightful character, and he has that same compelling charisma that makes him oddly attractive in the same way as Jareth, so it's easy to believe they're the same sort of creature. Rumpelstiltzkin in particular seems bound by consent - it doesn't do to just take Snow's hair, she has to give it willingly - so Sarah repeating her Labyrinth words was the inevitable conclusion of this. She needed to be in a situation where she had maybe forgotten her own power. I love confident, strong female characters - and Sarah in Labyrinth became that - so I guess I was rolling with the idea that sometimes as we grow up we can become jaded and lose some of our imagination and confidence in ourselves. Sarah just had to find it again, and Gold - unfortunately - prompted her to remind herself of her own strength.

I love Labyrinth fanfic, Sarah/Jareth is a great ship, and Return to Labyrinth (the manga) was kind of a disappointment (why focus on Toby? when all the great fanfic have so many better plots??), so this is my way of redeeming those sequels a little. It should have all been about Sarah. We so rarely get strong, female characters - why the manga tried to take that away, I don't know. It's sad.

One day I'll write a long Sarah/Jareth fic. Because it's a fandom that keeps on giving great fics. ♥

I love that so many people see a similarity between Jareth's and Rumpelstiltskin's characters. It makes total sense to me, and the way you wrote this fic? Awesome!

Never read Return to the Labyrinth but I did hear it was all Toby focused. I want a Sarah/Jareth sequel my ownself, so if you write one? You be sure to send me a link, honey, 'cause I'm gonna wanna read that for sure!! ;)

Thanx for the fab 'commentary' :)

Eames looks down at Arthur's face, pressed so suddenly and awkwardly near his, and his expression is blank. Ariadne swallows, and it hurts, because Eames is schooling his emotions more tightly than she's ever seen him, and this has to be painful for him, to have Arthur so close and so far away.

Except, Bastian's voice is deeper than it has been when he says, "Eames," and then again, "Eames?" and Ariadne's heart is in her mouth, it's the only way she can describe it, because it's Arthur, oh, somehow, it's Arthur, and he's come back to them and they can stop this farce. And Eames has realized too, because his eyebrows are furrowed, and his face had been entirely blank.

Eames' eyes are scraping Arthur's face like he's been missing - not just his personality, but his whole body gone too. Eames is looking at Arthur like he hasn't seen him for a week, even though his face has been right there the whole time. Arthur - because it is Arthur, it is - makes that sound again in the back of his throat, the one he made when he was saying that Cobb didn't know what Arthur was giving up, and Ariadne knows what it means now, because it was Eames Arthur was giving up, is giving up, and Ariadne glances up to see if Cobb has realized.

Cobb turns around a moment later to see why they're not following him, and his eyes flicker to Arthur and Eames, and over to Ariadne, then back to Arthur and Eames for a moment. Arthur and Eames are almost frozen; Eames' hands tight on Arthur's elbows, their eyes locked on each other.

The trees around them that had been rustling gently in the wind start to quieten; a silence settles on the whole, frozen tableau as Bastian's subconscious can't populate the dream any more. His imagination is busy with something else.

Someone else.

Ariadne looks over to see Cobb, to gauge his reaction, and she catches the moment he realizes what's going on, the instant he finally, finally understands.

Ariadne doesn't know what to say. "Arthur" might be what she wants to say, using his name like Mal devised, like a totem. She wants to use his name to bring him back permanently, but Arthur stepped through that door despite his feelings for Eames, despite not wanting to die, because Arthur wanted to save Amelia like Mal saved him, and Ariadne doesn't have the right to decide for him.

Cobb takes a breath, and Ariadne fights the urge to stop him, to shout out, because whatever name he chooses to say probably will decide the whole way forward. Ariadne imagines for a moment telling Amelia's parents that they're sorry, they can't help; she's much more relieved at the concept than she should be.

When he speaks, Cobb doesn't say a name. His eyes linger on the weird, half-accidental embrace between Arthur and Eames, and his voice is soft when he says, "How long?"

"Years," Arthur breathes, without tearing his gaze from Eames, and Eames, Eames who's never without a word to say, stays silent and trembles a little. Eames' mouth compresses into a line, like it's a fight to keep his emotion in check now. "Years and years."

~I didn't word count, but... you know... :)

Mashing together Inception and the Neverending Story is the stupidest idea I ever had, and I'm always grateful you came in and saved me, because you gave me the strength not to quit and to post it. ♥

What can I even say?

The PASIV lent itself so easily to Fantasia, which is a world built on imagination. I don't know why someone didn't do the crossover before me. Actually I do - it was really hard to figure out a way to present it interestingly.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a passing resemblance to the kid who played Bastian in the movie, which gave me a really interesting entrance into the story. I always love characters who have a secret identity, and a secret skill. The trope of Arthur having no imagination became something I saw I could use; no one has no imagination, so why would anyone hide the imagination they had?

Because imagination is dangerous. Especially somewhere like Fantasia (and the PASIV) where anything is possible. So Arthur had a dangerous secret of too much imagination. He used to be Bastian Bux, and he used to live permanently in a PASIV. That was my basic idea. The idea of names being a totem came early in the development idea, and that led me to the idea of Arthur and Bastian and Seb - Bastian (the whole mind) would split his mind in two. There would be Seb - the creative mind, and Arthur - the scientific mind. And the two would be able to operate independently.

I always knew I wanted it to be Arthur/Eames. It would have to be an interesting relationship - with Arthur hiding a big secret. But Arthur's responsible - he would never commit himself to a longterm relationship while holding such a big secret. (That didn't mean he didn't want to.) So I came up with the idea of Arthur and Eames being together for a long time. Secretly. Arthur would never fully commit, which would kind of infuriate Eames and actually attract him more - Eames is attracted to the impossible. Mal's quote: "do you know what it is to be a lover? to be two halves of a whole?" - Arthur can't commit to be Eames' lover fulltime. He's made up of two halves, but he's not whole; he can't commit. But he wants to. Eames loves him, so he takes what he can get, even if he doesn't know why (until the fic.) Seb is a full, separate personality - had Seb stayed in Arthur's head (instead of what happens to him), then Seb might have fallen in love with someone else. Maybe even Ariadne. That would have been awkward.

This moment in the woods is Arthur awake for the first time when Eames knows. Now Eames knows his secret, Arthur knows that Eames is aware of why he's been holding back - and Arthur's unable to hide that he loves Eames. But he's also torn apart by it. Arthur's loved Eames for years - and that's what he's admitting to Eames here; he may be answering Cobb, but really he's telling Eames: Years. I've loved you for years and years.

And why did I choose Ariadne's POV? Cobb's POV was too distant - too much story missed out. Arthur's POV meant I couldn't hold onto all the identities. Eames' - there was too much emotion. Ariadne had an empathetic link to Arthur, she felt empathy for Seb and Bastian, and she had an excuse to be in all the places, all the time. It's always interesting being the outside to an epic romance. And, of course, I then had her in place for the ending.

I always wanted, as soon as I saw the film, to write a fic with a BRRRRRRRRRRRRMMM ending. So I did the best as I could to give Arthur and Eames the biggest rollercoaster of a story.

The last trip to Fantasia should be the catharsis. Arthur gaining imagination of his own, and showing he has control of Fantasia - as opposed to Fantasia having control of him. Arthur and Eames getting a beautiful, snuggly ending. It's happy and a satisfying conclusion to their tribulations. Everyone's safe, everything worked out, and that's why it was the MOST GLORIOUS TIME OF MY LIFE TO WRITE THAT CREEPY ENDING.

I feel the same about the ending as I do about the Inception ending. It's something goddamned creepy. It's ambiguous - is Ariadne honouring his memory, or has she been overrun? Ariadne walking toe-to-heel is the spinning top, starting to waver. Does she land?

I guess it's up to you.

This is technically 666 words of fic, but I'm leaving it because a) it's the passage I want; and b) it amuses me that it happened to coincide with the Mark of the Beast.

"Cap," Tony says, narrowing his eyes a little, trying to hide how hard he's breathing. And other things. Steve shakes his head. Ah. So this is one of those name moments. One of these days, Tony will understand Steve when he blathers on about the difference between Natalie and Natasha. "Steve," Tony amends, keeping his voice low. "What the hell was that?"

Steve, in front of him, flickers a look over to the men still wrapped in streetlamp, and shrugs. "Modern homosexual men need to know it's okay to be gay. Cowards who bully them need to know it's okay; if a couple of superheroes are okay with it, well, we're positive role models to the world."

Tony resists the urge to blast something. It's easy, with Steve so close. Hitting Steve - even though he doesn't even really feel it - is like kicking a puppy. Easy. Damaging to the soul. Irreversible.

"Steve- I'm not even gay."

"I know. They don't." Steve shrugs. "Besides..." A slight smug smirk twitches on his face for just a moment. "You felt gay back there."

"...you could feel that through the iron suit?" Tony asks, appalled, wondering just how good that super serum was.

"I meant you kissed me back," Steve says, unruffled. Then a slight frown creases his face. "Was there something else for me to feel?"

"No," Tony lies, "apart from my severe awkwardness."

"Your tongue in my mouth spoke that in volumes," Steve says, still in that ridiculous placid voice.

Tony sighs, and remembers the megatons of power in his palms before he faceplants into one of them. He had kissed back, but it was... it was rude not to, right? He already knows how much of a lie that is. Even if he hadn't slightly admitted it to himself, Pepper had shouted it enough in their messy distended break-up last year. He feels dizzy, annoyed, and Agent Hill is smirking so widely that Tony already has half a dozen plans to annoy her stacked up in the back of his head.

Number one: reprogram her TIVO so it only plays How I Met Your Mother.

It's hard to be very angry at Steve, because Tony knows everything he does is with the best of intentions, it's just... "It's all very well for you," Tony says, trying to figure it out. Trying to pretend he's not figuring it out as he goes. "You're not in the public eye as much as I am—the world knows you're Steve Rogers, and knows you're Captain America, and knows you're one and the same, but there's still a distinction for me."

Steve just looks a little puzzled now. "The world knows you're you, Tony."

"They don't know anything about me when I'm not in the suit." Tony shakes his head. "Even Fury makes the distinction. Iron Man good, Tony Stark bad-"

"You're not bad," Steve says, low and serious, like he thinks Tony one hundred per cent believes that.

He's sort of right to think that.

"And you're in the suit," Steve says. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be this big of a deal. You're the one who said kissing doesn't mean much. And you know Fury's always saying with our power comes responsibility, and for one small thing, that's a whole crowd of people thinking differently."

He gestures behind them. Tony squints. There are a lot more faces turned angrily to the men wrapped in a lamp post. A couple of the cops look more confident too. "Wow," Tony says, because outlandish he can do whatever he's feeling, "look at what one kiss did. We should have had sex in front of them."

Steve, predictably, colors.

"Let's just drop our statements and get back to the mansion," Tony mutters. Because Steve is right. Tony remembers saying it. Kissing. Kissing isn't anything.

Pepper's right. There's a lot of things that go wrong in his life that are his fault.

Not like he'll ever tell her that.

My ENTIRE MOTIVATION for this fic was to write something CHEESY and TROPEY and it is COMPLETE ID FIC. Pure self gratification. So I'm glad other people liked the slightly cracky fluff, because I had fun writing it.

This is one of the rare Tony POV sections of the fic (there are two Tony POV scenes?) Originally, I meant to swap them around more. I even think the fic might have been better fully in Tony's POV. There would have been a bigger dollop of angst, I think - Steve's POV was pure cheese.

Sometimes you just need some cheese in your life.

So this is post the kiss. Steve, after Tony's told him "kissing isn't anything" has kissed him to prove a point. This whole passage is a classic moment of Tony being in denial.

Because it's Tony Stark, there's... two in-jokes to him having an erection. Because I'm cool like that. There's "trying to hide how hard he's breathing. And other things" and Tony saying "...you could feel that through the iron suit?" Erection jokes are always funny. (I'm about 12 years old mentally, but you already knew that.)

There's a reference to Natalie and Natasha - I wrote this pre-movie (stupid timing of the fest) and so only had Iron Man 2 to work off. I liked the idea of her still working for Tony, but oh, look. JOSSED. I was just lucky I had a slightly delayed posting date so I could quickly switch Coulson for Hill.

Um. Steve's very gung-ho on the idea of being role models. I know there's tons of problems with subtle homophobia and passive prejudice and there's more than just people calling you a faggot or dyke in the street -- but I think in all the social justice storms on the internet, some people forget that sometimes you can ignore the subtle stuff, but it's the blatant in-your-face stuff where you wish you had an Iron Man suit to put on and blast them in their face. Plus, it's super hard fighting the subtle homophobia when all the blatant terrible homophobia is going on. So I stuck with just the cat-calling and bullying so things didn't get too heavy - this is supposed to be a fluff piece.

Tony's right - he's not gay. In my canon headcanon he's bisexual. He's aesthetic-focussed over anarchy. But he is in denial. Terrible denial. He's sort of aware he's in denial, but it's too much of a risk (Steve letting him down) for Tony to not lie.

Facepalming is one of my favourite internet things, so having Tony in his Iron Man suit contemplating facepalming amused me because of his hand weapons.

And I love Pepper. I ship Tony/Pepper like mad. I just don't think it would work long term, alas. Tony's too broken, and he needs someone in his line of work. Pepper will get too hung up on him putting himself in danger so much. Tony-of-this-fic had a crush on Captain America as a teen, something he's never grown out of, and in my head, Pepper had noticed Tony liked the real one too - it was a contributing factor to their break up.

Agent Coulson, in the original draft, was going to have his TIVO stuck on Supernanny. (Coulson, y u die and mess up my fic, hm?)

Oh, the Natalie/Natasha distinction was also to parallel Tony's weird neuroses about Iron Man and Tony being regard as different - because as far as Tony's concerned he is Iron Man, there's no different, so being labelled by Natasha in her original SHIELD report as Iron Man suitable, Tony Stark not has been bothering him ever since. And Tony likes to sulk over things. A common thread in all the comics is Tony hating himself (it's done especially well in the Extremis storyline), so that's one of the things that makes Steve/Tony work for me - Tony thinks he's a monster, Steve shows him he's not.

Steve points out the good the kiss has done, and Tony makes a joke - because that's his reaction to being emotionally touched by something. He is impressed at what the kiss has done to people. And Tony might actively be in denial about how he feels about Steve, but he's aware of that good - and that the outlandish things he says sometimes have consequences that he has to deal with.

Like kissing not being anything.

When in the end, it turns out to be everything.

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curious! :D

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Can I request all the fridge notes instead of 500 words?

Re: Can I request all the fridge notes instead of 500 words?

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THIS WHOLE FIC REALLY (only mostly this bit...)

Re: THIS WHOLE FIC REALLY (only mostly this bit...)

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