templemarker, posts by tag: suits - LiveJournal

Tripping the Line
by templemarker

Notes: BINGO! For the "authority figures" square of my 2011 kink_bingo card. Thank you to samjohnsson for being the wonder beta.

( 'No,' he said, adjusting his tie back to perfection and smoothing down his collar. 'I'm not fucking you for the first time in the back of a car like some horny, uncultured teenager. I don't care if it's a Town Car, that's just too crass.'Collapse )

Thank you to all the lovely people who've commented on Unobstructed Views (Suits, Mike/Harvey, NC17). Nothing makes breaking into a new fandom nicer than hearing you've not completely cocked up the characterization on your first try!

I usually preface what I'm about to say with "I don't really do kink memes, but..." Clearly that is a falsehood now. secretly a reef rat exists entirely because of a kink meme. At least a third of my Generation Kill stories came from a meme. Some truly wonderful stories I've read, both abandoned and finished, have come from kink memes. I'm just going to own it: I love kink memes. I love the creative breeding ground they've become. I hate comment threading and word counts, but I love me some memes. (I also love that "kink meme" so rarely, at this point, actually means kinky. I love that kink is now a different type of noun.)

With that awesome intro, I wanted to mention a couple places I'm hammering out some fic. The WIP model is one I'm still mildly terrified of with regard to my own writing, but given it's relative success for me and my inability to leave things unfinished that I've put into the public sphere, we'll just call it kosher and go with it.

unbuttoned and unbound, on suitsmeme. Harvey/Mike, prompt "Harvey, sans suit."

Like the Tide, The Eagle "Happy Gay Farmers" meme, Marcus/Esca. I kind of dropped the ball on this one, but I have it firmly clasped in my hands now. I'll probably finish this one by the end of the week.

Not to count my chickens, etc etc, but I've been really rocking in the writing as of late due primarily to this gem of a website: 750words.com. The basic deal is that, every day, you write 750 words. That's it. They're private. They can be anything. You get points and little badges if you complete the bowling scorecard along the top. There's a slight competition element, but you're essentially competing against yourself. And if you're me, you're trying to trick yourself into writing with a subtle deadline-guilt trip mechanism. This has been the perfect vehicle for fic writing for me. Write or Die doesn't allow the time for reflection mid-sentence that I need sometimes, and other tools don't guilt trip me into doing it. I am a fairly undisciplined writer--I can go months without putting my words on the page, and then in a week I can pump out eight or ten thousand words. My mother, bless her woolen socks, writes every single day with the kind of discipline I've never dreamed of having (but she always wished I'd have).

Anyway, I've been using 750words so far this month with decent success. I've managed to complete the goal 75% of the month, and I'm on a five day hot streak right now. Here's hoping I can stick with it.

Unobstructed Views
by templemarker

Notes: This is an ep tag to 107, though I believe it can be read without having seen it. I have not been moved to write an ep tag since, um, Buffy. Harvey/Mike, NC-17. My grateful thanks to samjohnsson for superb beta.

( He contemplated this in the warm amber of his glass when the chair next to him was pulled out and a familiar frame dropped into it. Mike ducked out of his bag and set it next to him, and Harvey suppressed a sigh. Every time that stupid bag marred the line of Mike's suit, no matter how poorly constructed it was, it ruined the line and made Harvey's eyes hurt looking at him.Collapse )

So, yeah, no more protests. Can I bother anyone for a Suits beta?

Predictability, thy name is templemarker. I mean, just look at this:



Can you blame me?

Gina Torres quoting lines from "Top Gun" makes my toes curl with utter delight. Suits, you are catnip, I want to write and read all the things from you!

Livejournal under DDoS attack kind of turns that around, though. Listen, I've been with LJ since the lights were turned on, and I'll be here until the homepage is only available in Cyrillic, but here's some other places you can find me if you're looking to branch out:

Dreamwidth; I mirror every post between DW and LJ and answer comments in both places. Honestly, I think DW has some kinks that need to be worked out for me to be inclined to use it more, but it's there and you're welcome to friend it.

The Google+! You are welcome to add. At least, until they delete my profile for using a handle; honestly, this post is the best articulation I've seen of the divide between people who prefer using handles to using RL names. Anyway, G+ is amusing.

Twitter; I was there with more frequency before my job turned up to eleven, but I pop back in every now and then and try to add people back.

Tumblr; I freely admit I fail at this and haven't quite worked out how to properly reblog things, but there it is.

Delicious; lots of bookmarks there. Honestly, if LJ ever got tanked the thing I'd miss most is my memories. Food for thought, self.

And of course, my fic archive. All my fic, especially the older stuff I haven't posted to this journal, is archived there permanently.

There's only a few things at my AO3 account, which I have reservations about using, but challenge fic from the last two years is there.

So, there's that.

I read Ghost Story, and I have SO MANY FEELINGS. SO MANY. ( cut for spoilers.Collapse )

I know it's made the rounds already, but THE DARK KNIGHT TEASER TRAILER unf. It's like watching the Batception video only real.

You know, there's some real interesting differences between how Marvel has managed its movie franchise and how DCU has. The first real part of this is that Marvel Studios incorporated after the Spiderman movies (v1) while DCU remains, effectively, an imprint of its parent studio. This gives Marvel a lot more independent license to pursue a particular vision of its characters, which has in the last five years manifested itself into this combined universe that will reach a peak with The Avengers next year. It's pretty ambitious--if you can get them in on one film, say Iron Man or Captain America, you can kick them into the whole franchise of five or six films. They're capitalizing on the generation who grew up on 6 Star Wars films, on 11 Star Trek films. They're not going for the trilogy brass ring--they're going for the perpetual franchise, and it takes a huge amount of creative control to do that with characters who have sixty or seventy years of fan recognition, but are probably less well known to popular culture today (prior to these films).

Compare that to DCU, who clearly has less creative control in the execution or "master plan" of its films. They're working with completely different verses for each iteration of their iconic characters. Superman Returns was its own contained world (I totally wrote "contaminated," oh freudian slip); Nolan's Batman is Frank Miller's subconscious dancing across the screen; this summer's Green Lantern couldn't have been more tepid if it was the baby's bathwater. And you know, that would be fine if they all lived up to the promise of being strong films, but they're not. I love Nolan's Batman trilogy, but that's not my Batman, the Batman I've been reading since I was a teenager. That's a fucked up, dystopic variation on Batman that wings away from the vigilante I love, the man who built a family around him despite his avid protests. And Supes--Brandon Routh has the jawline for it, and the Richard-Jason aspect is interesting, but we're not going to kid ourselves that this is the same Superman who's BFF is a guy in a cowl, dealing with his not-so-secret lovechild with Lex Luthor.

DC couldn't even get the Wonder Woman project off the ground. They have never made a live action Flash movie. That is how haphazard the studio is.

What I'm saying is, Warner Brothers, the parent comany of DC Studio, has never figured out how to make superhero films well or cohesively, at least not since maybe Superman IV. (I'll give a small pass for the first four Batman films, because at least they were stylistically and internally consistent if not in their principle casting.) And realistically, they won't be until DC Studio is actually given the creative license needed to make films suitable for both general audiences with only a passing knowledge of the archetypical characters, and the slavishly devoted fans (i.e. me) who can offer expansive chronologies of the last several decades of comic book canon. Whereas Marvel, first created in 1996 with Blade and then X-Men, turned into a self financing company in 2004 and has been able to essentially muscle DC out of the market it used to dominate. And that is because it has creative fucking control over the movies it makes, which is what will make The Avengers be the fucking win.

Here's the thing--when White Collar started in 2009, I really struggled with it.

I mean, I got it, the appeal. Matt Bomer was a sexy BAMF seen previously on Tru Calling, Traveler, and Chuck, he's smoking and has that endearing hipster gay thing going on. Tim DeKay has been on basically every show that's aired since 1996 (though I personally liked him first from SeaQuest) and I don't know about you, but I started watching because I had a love connection with Tiffani Theissen on Fastlane that I've never abandoned. (Especially not now, lord have mercy that woman is built.)

But I wasn't up for The Adventures of Two Special White Guys again. I was frustrated with the cable networks for being uninventive in their casting and programming, frustrated with fandom because I knew White Collar was a recipe for slashy slashiness and was going to get a following no matter what. Especially when you add in the whole authority angle, and the hurt/comfort angle, and the likable thief angle. But I wanted something else, something that played with the tropes but inverted them as well; I wanted Psych, at least the parts of Psych that aren't white or white-washed. Or heteronormative.

What I'm saying is that it took a lot of convincing from my friend L to get me to really sit down and watch it, and what kept me around was all the things there are to like about it--Diana, Elizabeth and Peter's marriage, June's existence, the supporting characters. It actually took almost the whole first season for me to grudgingly admit I was into it, and the thing that kept me from being all college freshman feminist about it was the Peter/Elizabeth/Neal aspect which did, finally, become the predominant ship in the fandom (much to my relief).

I mean, fandom sees Psych and ships Shawn/Lassiter. What even is that. I'm not going to knock anyone's pairing--god knows I've liked the minor ships in my time--but I completely fail to see how to view the OTP as anything other than Gus and Shawn, a life partnership with a whole lot of gay. And yet, for the first four, maybe five years that Psych was around I could count the Gus/Shawn stories on one hand. That whole ship is the special guy and the guy that follows him around, i.e. Holmes/Watson, House/Wilson, etc. etc. etc.

Similarly, one of my longstanding bafflements was when The Dead Zone finally made it on to fandom's radar. I watched that show with an embarrassing fervor stemming from a visceral love of Anthony Michael Hall. (Thanks John Hughes.) And I wrote fic for it, too, of which there was very little for the first number of years. Same set-up as above: special guy and the guy that follows him around, namely Johnny and Bruce, who are together from day one. And somehow fandom, when it eventually turned its slashy eyes towards TDZ, thought Johnny and the dude that married Johnny's kid's mother and busted on him constantly, was the OTP. The mind boggles.

All this to say that when White Collar premiered I didn't have a lot of thrill going on; which is why I'm kind of shocked at the completely immediate way I've reacted to Suits. Same basic premise: special (white) guy encounters other white guy and they have adventures only they can have. Gayness included at point of sale. And I want to have problems with it, I do. I know from The Sentinel, I know from due South, I know from The Mentalist and House and Merlin that this is a pre-packaged Special White Guy sandwich of slash and yet I can't help myself.

Here's why I think this is so:

1. It has the mentor-student/authority role structure that I secretly crave without the abuse of power issues inherent in Peter and Neal.
2. Gina Torres.
3. I am a sucker for menswear and Harvey wears a three piece suits with double vents, peaked lapels and a full Windsor.
4. Everyone is kind of bitchy on this show and I like snappy comebacks.
5. Despite the racial and heteronormative flaws of apparently every cable show out there, I remain a key audience for shows where remarkable people are given opportunities to extend their talents despite previous circumstances.

I don't know. I eventually got over (most) of my concerns about White Collar, particularly given the supporting casts' diversity. And one day, like Psych, I believe there will be more than one show out there with a lead cast member who is a person of color and/or a queer person and/or not male and not relegated to "recurring character" or "supporting cast member." But even with Gina Torres, who I still worship like she's Jasmine and dream of like she's Zoe, until there's one episode that's about her and not about Harvey and Mike's happy funtimes together, that's supporting cast. And that bothers me.

But not as much as it should, which bothers me even more.