DVD Commentary Meme

[kethni]

Stolen! From approximately half my flist :D

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you 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.

Probably not the puns, I'm not a very pun person.

Comments

It's the Quiet Ones

[boudecia7.livejournal.com]

Heh, the more I think of the more of these I'd love to do for your fics, but for now I'll just use the first one that came to mind. I've always liked these paragraphs a lot. :D

Sark’s another one who seems addicted to the drama. Always making things more complicated than they have to be. Always having trouble just going with the flow and enjoying things. It takes him a little while to calm down and realise, yet again, that it feels good. It does feel good for him. I make sure it does because that’s the kind of guy I am; always trying to help out, reduce the drama.

His feet score on the sheet as he writhes and babbles. I can’t provide the kind of high he’s used to; I’m too boring, too normal, for that, but I can keep him begging and pleading long enough for the relief to be pretty sweet.

Well, it’s what guys like me do.

Re: It's the Quiet Ones

[kethni.livejournal.com]

I remember discussing with you the fact that Weiss's background is completely blank in Alias is both annoying as a view and a gift as a fanfic writer because he could be anyone in his 'off' hours, doing anything. The idea of him keeping Sark in his basement I think came first, as we were joking around I think, and the rest of the fic was built around it.

Fandoms seem to develop their own conventions in terms of the slash fic that they write. I came to Alias fic really late and read a lot of it very quickly so some of their conventions really hit me in the face. Weiss as a decent, rather woobie guy was one of them which struck me as extremely odd since he's not portrayed that way. You never see him selflessly step back so the heroine can be with the hero and that happened A LOT, and although it wasn't much there were a couple of comments, ad-libs possibly, indicating he did have an 'unconventional' sex life. So it part I was spoofing a little bit of those conventions in 'It's The Quiet Ones', by having Weiss cheerfully presenting himself as the way he seems to be presented in fic. Off to one side, watching the crazy drama, being a good friend, and going home alone.

I'd been studying The Yellow Wallpaper I think around the time I wrote this, and the idea of a loopy narrator was particularly appealing to me. Mohinder in Toxic was disturbed but fairly self evidently so, I especially liked Weiss in this because he was seemed that in daily life he'd pass as perfectly normal, until you saw his cellar. I'm positive in his own mind he IS the guy that other people think he is, but something somewhere isn't wired quite right.

Not that Sark is complaining *too* much, mind you it might be that being chained to the bed is making him a litte wary. The fact that he's needs to 'calm down' before he can enjoy sex is another alarm bell but I didn't want Weiss to have turned into a complete monster. He thinks Sark enjoys the sex and hopefully for the reader it seems clear that, whatever else, Sark really does. Once he's calmed down ;)

Re: It's the Quiet Ones

[boudecia7.livejournal.com]

Mmm, yes. Naughty Sark and his difficult personality. :P But yeah, in spite of his annoyance I think it's plain he does enjoy the sex. Mwahahahaha! :D

Spoons

[leadaisy.livejournal.com]

I’m with boudecia7, there is a bunch of you fics I would select from. So I choose a stand alone that I always wanted to know more about. And you wrote it from one of my prompts, hehe :P

So Matt has no problem sleeping on the couch at Mohinder’s apartment. Not in theory. The sleeping is fine, even having his private area in such a public space he can cope with, but the continual reassurance that Mohinder needs is a little wearying. Yes, he slept fine. No, it’s not a problem. Really. Really it’s fine. Of course Molly should have the other room. Certainly he doesn’t expect Mohinder to give up his room or his bed. It’s not a problem.

Until he comes home from work and sees the fire truck outside the apartment. He passes fire fighters, strong and handsome and soot stained, on the stairs. Mohinder is standing in the doorway talking to a fire fighter. Not flirting, which is a surprise since Mohinder flirts with everyone, but wringing his hands and stammering apologies. If anything Mohinder looks even more soot covered than the fire fighters. His pink shirt is grubby with it, his face smudged, and his hands blackened. They both turn as Matt reaches the top of the stairs and Mohinder looks horrified.

Re: Spoons

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Your prompts are always great fun :)


I normally do a lot of first person narrators but for some reason when I write third person I don't tend to focalise a lot. It's all or nothing! So for this story I tried something different; it's pretty much exclusively focalised on Matt, what he sees, what he thinks. It's slightly more subtle than 1st person so a bit of a stretch for me, LOL!

Matt's perspective colours the narrative, because Mohinder flirts with *him* he assumes Mohinder flirts with lots of people. Because Matt is gawping a little at the 'strong and handsome' firefighters we do too.

I haven't done the 'would-be-lovers-sharing-a-bed' trope much, just twice I think so I was happy to try something new. The scorch mark on the ceiling comes from me accidentally burning a kitchen cupboard by putting a lit candle inside. I have no idea why, I'm sure it made sense at the time!

Grubby Mohinder was there both to show that he had tried to deal with the fire himself, and failed miserably, and because grubby Mohinder doesn't pop up much and I thought it might tick a box for someone, LOL!

[jaune-chat.livejournal.com]

From Sublime, Part 2

I feel sick. “Mohinder, what did you do?”

He takes the scraps from me and walks into the kitchen. “It wasn’t my fault, Matt. Really it wasn’t.” He shoves the scraps down the waste disposal and turns it on.

“What wasn’t!”

“Matt, please don’t shout. I’ve only just got her down,” Mohinder says reproachfully as he washes his hands.

“Jesus Christ! Tell me what you did!”

He dries his hands and turns to me. “You know what I did,” he says softly. “I was in the supermarket and he saw me. I did call you but you didn’t answer. He saw me and he knew it was me of course.” Mohinder waves a hand at his leg and his face. “I would’ve been traced right to you. I couldn’t let that happen.”

I sink down onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Who?”

“My old master.” Mohinder sits opposite me and pats my leg. “You would’ve been caught. I couldn’t let you suffer for me, Matt. You understand don’t you? I couldn’t be without you.”

Can’t be real. Can’t be real. It’s a nightmare.

“What... what did you do with the body?”

“I carved it up and I’m burning it in the incinerator,” he says crisply. “Over the next few days. I don’t want to draw undue attention.”

“I...I... oh god.”

He kisses my cheek and stands up. “Try not to worry Matt; I’ll take care of you.”

[kethni.livejournal.com]

Sublime is a sequel to Toy and was my answer to a question nobody asked, why would anyone be the original of a clone?

This section is right at the very end of the story and it's the counterpoint to the journey of the Matt clone in Toy.

I was very interested in the extremes of experience that the clones could have and what effects those would have on them. In a way Matt in Toy is the ideal of what would happen; he grows and develops, learning to reason, and developing his own sense of self and of right and wrong. He chooses not to kill because he comes to the considered decision that it's wrong. He doesn’t ‘need’ Mohinder to provide him with sense of self or worth as he’s grown to find those inside himself.

Mohinder in Sublime is the other extreme, the dark flip-side. Unlike Toy!Matt, Mohinder has baggage, his life as a clone has poisoned his perceptions and beliefs. His sense of self has been crippled by the dehumanisation, abuse, and violence he’s suffered, leaving him completely dependent on Matt for validation and purpose. He's too crushed to be capable of developing an independent moral compass and, as he was never meant to think independently, the company didn’t bother inculcating one in him either. Since his world is so small, his attachments, to Daniella, to Matt, are intense and obsessive. He literally has no sense of the wider world and no awareness of why Matt is so horrified by his actions.

Throughout the story, I tried to put in little suggestions that Mohinder was not going to be untouched by the experiences he’d had. In the same way that he carries the physical scars, he also carries mental and emotional ones. There were signs but Matt chose not to look too closely, ignoring Bennet’s warning, not thinking about the ‘steel’ in Mohinder’s nature, and not considering deeply the effects Mohinder’s previous life had on him. For Matt I think the worse thing is probably not that Mohinder killed his ex-Master so much, but that he’s completely calm about it. Mohinder doesn’t understand that he did something terrible, simply because he has no conception of human life as having innate worth. I tried to show in the passage how utterly shocked Matt is by what’s happened, he knows but he doesn’t want to believe it. He can’t square the image he has of Mohinder, the image that Mohinder is still showing him, of a caring affectionate man, with the cool brutality needed to dispatch someone that way.

Mohinder isn’t mad but he is terribly, perhaps hopelessly, damaged and there’s no easy happy ever after to be had.

Ruling in Hell (December) :D

[boudecia7.livejournal.com]

*evil Mel wants more*

“Would you like me to stop?”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Adam gently rolls him onto his back. “I’ll give you something to smile about instead.”

“Oh, really?” Matt asks.

Adam rubs his thumb over Matt’s nipples then leans down to roll his tongue over them. Matt’s fingers stroke Adam’s hair as he covers each in turn with his mouth and bites gently.

“’S’good,” Matt murmurs.

Adam trails his tongue down Matt’s sternum and buries his teeth in Matt’s stomach in a wide, deep bite that makes Matt arch his back.

“You like?” Adam asks, looking up. “Yes, I see you do.”

He pulls away the towel and casts it aside. He runs his tongue down Matt’s length and pauses as Matt’s fingers knot into his hair. He carefully pries Matt’s hand free and puts it onto his shoulder.

“Don’t pull the hair, love,” he says softly.

Re: Ruling in Hell (December) :D

[kethni.livejournal.com]

In an early kink meme someone asked for ‘After Mohinder’s death, Matt/Sylar are company cellmates’, they may have specifically asked for hate sex but I don’t remember. I gave it a go but got mired down very quickly as I was having trouble envisioning any reason that Matt and Sylar would ever sleep together. I posted the bit I had and during a timestamp meme was asked to go back 6 months earlier and show how Matt had got there in the first place.

December is just before the middle, original, segment and it’s a very packed chapter. This section is the climax, if you’ll pardon the expression, of Matt and Adam’s relationship. In a lot of ways Adam is there to serve story functions but hopefully it’s integrated well enough that he’s a fun character in his own right. Adam was originally serving the role of the ‘old lag’ that is such a cliché in prison films, someone who clues the naive innocent on the rules, hierarchy, and codes that govern. It’s a cliché for a reason, you really need that person, or else you have to spend a stupid amount of time with your poor protagonist finding out the hard way the people he really shouldn’t tick off and what happens if he does. I tend to write V1.0 Adam, the Adam who was charismatic and led the company rather than the wide-boy second version that hung out in bars and was scared of Arthur Petrelli. Adam managed to lead strong minded and intelligent people like Angela and Linderman, so it seems to me that he’d have a lot of emotional intelligence and a very good understanding of other people. Certainly in Ruling in Hell, Adam served as a nice counterbalance to the continual betrayals and abuse that Matt was suffering. Matt had to have someone that he could talk to and to rely on and Adam the roommate filled that spot very nicely. Because the original request specified Mohinder was dead, Matt was still grieving and I was wary about him jumping into a consensual relationship too quickly. I wanted it to be a natural outgrowth of a shared fondness and warmth between them and that takes a little time.

They’re not in love and the sex is affectionate rather than passionate, but that’s what Matt needs. It’s a rare, much needed moment of calm and contentment before the escape and the major turn of the plot.