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DVD commentary Q&A
I've noticed in the past that I basically suck at doing DVD commentaries on my own fic, for a rather specific reason: when I'm writing, I tend to approach it from a "narrate what's happening" standpoint (I kind of "see" or "feel" the story happening, I guess), and afterwards, that's what I remember -- the things that happened in the story, not my own thought process that went into it. In general, the main times that I remember a good bit of the creative process were on the stories where things got borked enough that I had to do a lot of unborking, like the White Collar horse-farm AU where I had to block out the ending using toys and rewrite it multiple times, because I had SO FLIPPING MANY CHARACTERS running around that I kept losing track of where they were.
But I've seen a couple people doing a variation of DVD-meme commentary where they ask for a specific scene, and then talk about what's happening in the scene -- what's going on in the characters' heads, what non-viewpoint characters are up to, what might happen in the parts of the scene that aren't shown. And that, I think I could do!
So - give me a scene from one of my stories, and also let me know if there's anything specific that you want to know ("what was Neal really up to", "why did [x] do [y]", "what happens after the last scene in this story") or I can just talk about the scene in general, probably from more of an in-universe than a meta perspective (but it depends on the fic). If it's one that I really don't have ANY thoughts on, I'll have you pick another one ...
My fanfic on AO3.
It doesn't just have to be fanfic - feel free to ask about a scene from my original work, if you'd prefer! (A non-comprehensive list of my non-fanfic stuff: Hunter's Moon - Sun-Cutter - Freebird - Homespun)
But I've seen a couple people doing a variation of DVD-meme commentary where they ask for a specific scene, and then talk about what's happening in the scene -- what's going on in the characters' heads, what non-viewpoint characters are up to, what might happen in the parts of the scene that aren't shown. And that, I think I could do!
So - give me a scene from one of my stories, and also let me know if there's anything specific that you want to know ("what was Neal really up to", "why did [x] do [y]", "what happens after the last scene in this story") or I can just talk about the scene in general, probably from more of an in-universe than a meta perspective (but it depends on the fic). If it's one that I really don't have ANY thoughts on, I'll have you pick another one ...
My fanfic on AO3.
It doesn't just have to be fanfic - feel free to ask about a scene from my original work, if you'd prefer! (A non-comprehensive list of my non-fanfic stuff: Hunter's Moon - Sun-Cutter - Freebird - Homespun)
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Ghost Stories ... that last scene. D: Thematically, it's there to tie the whole story together and bring the sense of creepiness/horror in all the characters' stories out of "fiction space" (the stories they're telling, which may or may not be true) and into the actual space the characters live in. I was going, I guess, for a horror-movie-style punch there. I had to do something like that. I was teetering on the edge of whether to go for the full-fledged horror ending, or give Neal some kind of last-minute "out", and I ended up going for the darker option. It felt like anything else would weaken the impact of the whole story.
Within the world of the story, it's obviously a terrible place in which to leave Neal (and Peter) ... but of course, that's also part of the horror-movie theme, because they tend not to end well for the protagonists. Also, I really don't envision Kate as evil in this, by any means. She's just lonely, and cold, and misses Neal, and doesn't relate to the living world very well. Neal makes the choice to go with her (he's not forced), and I don't think he's unhappy afterwards, though he is, technically, dead. In a way I think the ending is probably harder on Peter (and Mozzie) than on Neal, since "my CI was taken by a ghost" is not really the sort of thing that Peter's bosses are going to believe (or that Peter himself believes, really, once the initial shock passes), so the only remaining explanation is that Neal ran, and they never see him again.
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But, yeah, it strikes me as a tragic ending for the sake of Peter, Mozzie, June etc, and for that reason it makes me really sad, but it's not really a tragic ending for Neal, I don't think, who gets to be with the woman he loves for eternity.
And I will find some stuff from the psychic Neal AU, because I'm always eager to talk about it. I just don't want to come off as creepy or intrusive.
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One is, how much can you tell me about what Kate was doing and what was going through her head? As you know, I have a pretty firm personal ideas about Kate's motivations and personality in canon, but in your story, it's, of course, your own invention.
And then, just the whole scene where Keller is torturing Peter. Torture is normally one of things I really can't bear, but that is my favorite scene in my favorite fic. And this line Stuff happens. It can happen to you just like everybody else. No matter how good you think you are, it'll happen. And you live through it, and sometimes it makes you better, and sometimes it makes you worse, and sometimes it just ... happens., I mean, to me, that sums up so much of the whole series, but I don't know if you agree.
And, uh, if I can only have one, I'll go with the second question.
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First: Kate.
So, well, first of all, I always think people are free to read whatever motivations into the characters that they see in them. I mean, yeah, I have my own take on Kate, but since we get so little of her side of things in the AU, I think whatever interpretation you put on her is just as valid as mine, if not necessarily the canonical one. (Although I suspect that your take on her probably is pretty close to, if not exactly the same as, the AU's "canon" one.)
Kate in the Psychic Neal AU is Kate with the same problem she has with Neal in "Forging Bonds", except writ large because of the telepathy issue. In canon she breaks up with him because she realizes he's conning her, but she takes him back when he finds her in NYC. In the AU, she breaks up with him because she realizes he's been "pushing" her mentally -- conning her, yes, but in a far more insidious and terrifying way.
A lot of readers thought that Neal's psychic damper was cruel and unfair. And it really was -- not to mention a gross violation of his bodily integrity, considering that it was forced on him against his will -- but it was also, in a way ... beneficial? Up to that point, Neal had mentally manipulated other people as casually as breathing. He couldn't not do it. He genuinely did TRY not to do it to people he's close to, but he can't always tell he's doing it, either. It's just a natural part of the way he relates to people. And prior to meeting Mozzie and later Kate, the only people he was close to were his fellow psychic kids, who could recognize/resist mental invasion themselves. So, during his formative years, he never trained himself out of it, and by the time he got close to people who didn't have the defenses that the other psychic kids did, it was so much a part of how he related to the world that he couldn't really stop. .... well, okay, that's not entirely accurate. In all honesty, given sufficient motivation and maturity, he could train himself to recognize when he's doing it, and then not do it -- which is the optimistic version of his future. Very much the way that Neal's con-artist background functions in canon. In a lot of ways, Neal's psychic powers are thematic stand-ins for his con skills in the AU … well, of course he has the con skills too, but they're entwined and very much a part of the same thing.
The only person he never manipulated (much) was Mozzie, because Mozzie can tell when he's doing it. (I never really get into this much in the story but ... there's a whole suite of reasons for this, part of which is just Mozzie's innate paranoia -- he usually assumes that any thought he isn't 100% sure is his own is put there by Neal, and at least half the time he's right. But also, some of the stuff Mozzie is into -- meditation, altered mental states, etc -- really IS beneficial in combating psychic attack. I mean, this is a thing IRL, after all, so of course it would be in the psychic Neal universe! I grew up among hippies in Alaska -- my dad's a fortune teller, among numerous other things -- and while I'm heavily agnostic on psychic powers IRL*, I know for a fact that there are people who train themselves to recognize and repel psychic invasion in the real world. As SOON as Mozzie found out his best friend was a government experiment with psychic powers, you bet the first thing he did was start prowling Internet message boards and New Age bookstores for everything he could find on the topic of "Telepathy, How to Resist Same". A lot of it is useless, of course, but some of it is effective. Mozzie is definitely not psychic-proof, but he's more so than most people.)
*I know better than to reject other people's lived experience of the world, even if it's not mine; that's why I consider myself agnostic on the topic rather than a flat-out nonbeliever. Besides, all that aside, how can you ever really KNOW.
But anyway, Kate realized -- accurately! -- that Neal had been manipulating her mind, and fled him. In the AU, she's not going to be able to come back to him as easily as she does in canon, because the psychic powers and his ability to change her mind for her are going to hang between them. (There's a shadow of it hanging over Neal, too -- since he doesn't always know when he's manipulating other people's minds, he can never quite trust that other people's feelings for him are real. God, Neal, your life.)
But she does still love him, and she realizes when she finds out what's been going on with him -- the FBI deal and the psychic damper -- that she loves him too much to see him be enslaved by the feds, even if she still doesn't quite trust him herself.
Basically, Kate in the AU is trying to do essentially what I assume Kate in canon was doing: use Fowler for her own ends, to open a door for her and Neal to escape together. In the AU, it's mostly that she's trying to save Neal (as opposed to both of them being in dire danger), which makes her death even more tragic and awful.
There's a lot I don't know about Kate's story in the psychic AU, and one of the main things I never figured out is whether she approached Fowler or he approached her. I do know that she's not on nearly as tight a leash as she is in canon; she has a lot more autonomy, in part because she has a HUGE lever to use on the CIA -- she can go public about the psychic kids and the government's role in it, and they can't really stop her, at least not without either killing her or locking her up somewhere. What I'm not sure about is whether she was out of the mess, and got back in voluntarily to free Neal from the feds, or whether the CIA approached her in France about acquiring Neal for their own ends, and she had little choice but to agree. In any case, Kate was a driving force behind the overall Fowler plan to a greater extent than I gather she was in canon. Not that she had zero autonomy there, but she was pretty much in a situation where she had to run constantly in order to keep from being crushed. Whereas in the AU, she was pulling more of the strings. The huge misstep that she made, however, is that she failed to recognize that the CIA's ultimate goal was to kill Neal, rather than to use him as a psychic assassin/spy. All her plans were predicated upon the belief that the CIA was trying to smuggle Neal out of the country without hurting him, rather than maneuver him into a position where they could kill him without getting caught.
(Heaven knows if all of this actually makes sense, but it makes about as much sense as season one of White Collar, so the bar was set low. :P)
I need to think about the Peter stuff a bit and get it straight in my head ...
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The stuff with the rift between her and Neal went down pretty much just as I always thought. It's really an even more disastrous relationship than they had in canon. I've always felt that had Kate not died, she and Neal had about an even chance of making it work or falling apart again, but in this 'verse it's hard to see them ever really being happy together, not with Neal forever invading Kate's mind and Kate (justifiably!) resenting it.
In the AU, it's mostly that she's trying to save Neal (as opposed to both of them being in dire danger), which makes her death even more tragic and awful.
See, I always got the sense that this was the case, and, yes, it does make her death even worse.
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I still don't think it's impossible they could've eventually made it work, but yeah, a lot less likely than in canon.
I do regret not giving Kate more agency in the story. I mean, in the end she basically ended up like she did in canon, getting 'fridged to further Neal's story rather than getting to have her own. I don't have very many regrets about the story, but the fact that Kate's story ends here, and ends the way it did, is definitely one of them.
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... so basically, yeah, if it hits your creative brain in the right way, you have my blessing to go for it. :)
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It actually makes me really happy that that's your favorite, because Original Sin and, in particular, the scenes with Peter and Keller is really the point that the first "season" of the AU was building toward. I don't recall if the Peter-torture scenes were the first ones I wrote, but they were among the first I planned. It was always intended to go towards that.
.... the main reason being, I guess, because I felt that I needed to equalize things between Peter and Neal. Their dynamic is so unequal in this fic, more so than in canon because of everything that's happened to Neal and the involuntariness of his incarceration here. Neal in canon has at least some element of choice. He comes up with the anklet deal himself, and it's pretty clear that he can escape any time he wants to (even if that's not a GREAT option, it's still an option he has). But AU!Neal doesn't have that. He's forced into the deal with Peter, and he's forced to wear the inhibitor, and if he tries to escape there's a pretty good chance he'll be killed. The scales are tipped so heavily in Peter's favor in the AU that my sense of fair play needed to tip them back in Neal's direction -- Peter has to be brought down a bit, he has to be given a glimpse of things on Neal's side of the fence before they can relate to each other as equals.
But there's also the runaway train aspect of the fic, where it WAS going to that point whether I liked it or not. :D I find my plotting process a bit weird, because I do exert conscious control over it, and yet, a lot of times, stuff is just gonna happen (like I was talking about in a comment to a previous post, having to AU the AU because it just won't NOT go in a depressing direction). I don't think of the characters as having an independent existence, or the story "writing itself" -- that's not how I mentally parse the process, anyway -- but there is definitely a pretty big element of the writing process that's out of my conscious control. And the Peter-torture scenes were locked in pretty early on as the thematic goal for Peter's emotional arc in the first season.
But it's not really about torturing him, which might be why it works for you on a non-torture level -- I feel kind of pretentious saying that those are character scenes, not torture scenes, but well, those are character scenes. I stayed deliberately vague in my descriptions of the torture, of what exactly Keller was doing to him -- partly because Peter's viewpoint is kind of confused and inward-focused, but also because that's not the point. It's not about the physical process; it's about stripping him bare and turning him inside out and pushing his train of thought onto an entirely new track. Ironically, Keller was trying to do something along those lines, but in a different way and for different ends. And yeah, I think you are exactly right to pinpoint those scenes -- and those lines -- as the bits that sum up the series, because yes, that was one of the lynchpins of the whole thing, and those lines are basically the point that I think nails how much Peter has changed from where he was at the very start of the AU.
Unfortunately, the thing that makes Original Sin so powerful -- that both Neal and Peter as individuals, and their relationship with each other, is completely blown apart -- is what's making the next arc so @#%$#@!! difficult to write, because their relationship in the first arc, and their personalities, are pretty close to where they are in canon. But at the end of the first arc, everything changes; it has to. The thing I'm struggling with is what it's going to look like when it goes back together. (I now know what's going on in both Peter and Neal's heads, going into the second "season" -- Peter's mind is falling apart, and Neal is very very angry. The question is how to take that and put it together into something constructive and positive, instead of something destructive and awful.)
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Veleda: Being way personally overinvested in fanfic since... uh, you don't want to know.
And of course you know this, but I just want to make it clear that I am always up for talking through anything you want to talk through, or even just being a sounding board.
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YES YES. This, all of this. The interesting thing about the psychic Neal 'verse, I guess, is that I didn't set out to write about trauma, and people's reactions to trauma, but it ended up becoming very much about that .... and yeah, that's kind of the thematic underpinnings of it, right there. I really love how you put this, because, yes; I agree totally with what you said here about typical trauma narratives, and I guess what I wanted to get at with the psychic Neal 'verse is that it's basically just .... shit, shit that people go through. Everyone is affected differently (Neal and Keller went through basically the same hell as kids, but ended up reacting in utterly different ways). And suffering doesn't have any meaning on its own; purpose is imposed on it by people trying to make sense out of something inherently meaningless.
One of the main things Keller is trying to do in "Original Sin", although I don't recall how explicitly this was developed in the story itself, is to force Neal to react to their shared trauma the same way Keller does. Keller wants to hurt everyone, the innocent and the guilty alike; he wants to destroy everything; and he wants Neal to want it too, so he pushes and pulls at Neal's brain, trying to make Neal hate everyone and everything as much as he does. It's kind of sad, in a way, because I don't think he has the slightest clue why he's doing this, but making Neal agree with him is a way of justifying his own actions. Not that I think Keller feels any sort of guilt or shame for anything he's done, but he feels the same connection to Neal that Neal does to him (they're brothers, in a very real sense) and it really bothers him that Neal doesn't agree with him and keeps telling him he's wrong. It doesn't make him feel guilty, but it does make him uncomfortable and insecure .... lonely, even. He wants Neal's support; he wants them united in a common cause, even if he has to break Neal's mind to make it happen.
(Which is actually not too far off from how canon!Keller feels about Neal, I think, except without the telepathy element and the shared childhood. And, for "break Neal's mind", insert "kill all Neal's friends". Oh Keller. :P)
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But, yeah, that bond between Neal and Keller (and all the psychic children) was something I found compelling even before Original Sin, Original Sin just made that interest balloon.
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(I'm flying out tomorrow, and I really SHOULD be sleeping, but I'm in that travel mode where I'm too stressed and anxious to sleep -- not really in a bad/pathological way, just "ugh ugh, did I pack everything" and going over tomorrow's itinerary multiple times in my head. This is more fun to obsess on, at least ....)
As a starting point, at least, I know what's going on in both Peter's and Neal's heads. It's figuring out where to go from there that's tricky. Peter, I've talked about already -- he's missing a lot of memories, and it's getting worse (his new memories aren't sticking like they should) but he's trying to hide it because he's afraid, with reason, that if he's declared incompetent for duty, the CIA or some other agency is going to take advantage of the opportunity to disappear Neal.
And Neal is basically in the same headspace where he was at the start of season two in canon, except worse. He's grieving for Kate, his head's pretty messed up in general, and he's also furious -- at Fowler, at the people who did this to him, at the people who are holding him de facto prisoner now, at Peter, at himself, at EVERYTHING. Keller's screwing around with his head unlocked all the stuff that he's been repressing, and then Kate died and he felt her die, so basically he is an enormous seething mass of hurt and utter rage, plus all the problems he had before (panic attacks, emotional issues, etc), PLUS the set of problems he had at the very end of the first "season" relating to Kate's death and having the first inhibitor unceremoniously yanked out of his head (the seizures, etc), although that's mostly resolved itself. Mostly.
The only thing that's actually improved in his situation is that they have a better, version 2.0 psychic inhibitor on him. This one doesn't give him headaches and can be turned off and on. Peter has a key (continuing with the way that most things in this universe map onto things in our universe, it's analogous to the anklet key) but he's nervous, as yet, about turning it off, or even letting Neal know that he has a key. Which is probably good, because in Neal's present state of mind, he might just go off on a hunt for Kate's killers that would involve going mindkiller on quite a few people.
As far as where it goes from here ... there are only a couple of things that I know for sure. (I mean, I know where it goes in the depressing version, but that's not where I want this to go!) I want Rachel to eventually come into play, though not for a while. I'm pretty sure that I never named all six of the escaped psychic kids -- and if I did, I can always have her be one of the ones who supposedly died in the lab fire -- because Rachel is a PERFECT telepathic baddie, and the next "big bad" since Keller has gone underground at the moment. The other thing is that I want Neal to put himself back together, at least partly, by reading Peter's memories of him -- that is, he starts getting back to where he used to be (or to a more integrated-with-his-present-self version, I guess) by retrieving bits of himself that were "saved", in some sense, in Peter's memory.
I think the part I'm struggling with most of all is where and how to start. I've got a long arc, but I don't have the smaller pieces at all. As in the first season, I guess this one needs to be Peter and Neal investigating cases while the long-arc stuff happens around them, but they're so shattered at the start of the season that it's hard to imagine just doing the case-investigation stuff. And this is set four years earlier than canon -- because of Neal getting his deal immediately, rather than going to prison for four years -- which means the cases won't be the same, so I can't just map them onto the individual episode plots of season two. (Well, I kinda-sorta can. I did with certain parts of season one, after all! And of course I'm not bound to stick exactly to the canon timeline. But still, having them investigate copycat crimes or Mozzie's love life, with everything else that's going on, feels annoyingly trivial.)
... to some extent I guess I'm kinda just talking this through out loud. It helps to write down everything I've got so far, and get it straight in my mind. I don't mind if you don't have any suggestions for me. On the other hand, I am interested in any thoughts you might have! (Even if it takes me a bit to get back to you, on account of traveling ...) Or, if there are any parts of this you want to poke at, or anything that doesn't sound plausible or that you think needs to be thought through in more detail ...
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First off, I wouldn't be too worried about the timeline. (After all, the actual show never is.) I think things are different enough in this AU for you to mix past and present canon with your own stuff and not worry about it. But you're right that some of the crimes they investigated in S2 may feel to trivial for this series. I think mixing and matching could get you a lot here. Take what's useful from canon, but don't worry about following the plots exactly.
Take into consideration that anything I say is a suggestion, and mostly just me being excited. I'm really not trying to write your story for you.
The way I see it, there are a few things you'll need to establish immediately, the primary one being Neal working for the FBI on the new inhibitor. It makes perfect sense to me that that would happen, that some FBI person from behind the scenes would say, "Hey, we've got a psychic, and we're using him no matter what." But it makes me wonder if Neal's first emotional arc isn't just dealing with being under government control again, and figuring out if he can twist that to his own ends. (And I think the idea of a turf war between various government agencies with Neal as the prize could set up and explain a lot of plot.)
The starting is hard, because both Neal and Peter are in such ugly headspaces, but it's definitely a place to start. Neal, as said, reconciling being under government control again and trying to make it work for him. Peter trying to maintain a sense of normality, when normal is completely gone. And here is where I think you could mention more minor cases without actually going into them. Use their existence as proof that, yes, the world still goes on, but you don't have to delve into them if that doesn't serve the story.
Yes, Rachel is perfect! I was also thinking who might be behind Fowler in this universe. I mean, you could use Adler, but that requires changing everything about him. (Which, of course, you could still do.) I admit that I think Senator Pratt might fit in well here
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The way I see it, there are a few things you'll need to establish immediately, the primary one being Neal working for the FBI on the new inhibitor. It makes perfect sense to me that that would happen, that some FBI person from behind the scenes would say, "Hey, we've got a psychic, and we're using him no matter what." But it makes me wonder if Neal's first emotional arc isn't just dealing with being under government control again, and figuring out if he can twist that to his own ends.
*nods* This makes a lot of sense. He's gonna be actively trying to escape, or perhaps staying to figure out who is responsible for Kate's death and then escape, which will make things interesting.
I could possibly also bring in Alex -- Neal passing messages the other psychic kids to let them know to be careful is something that might happen.
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And Neal trying to escape makes perfect sense, and I think will really up the stakes, and add to the tension between Neal and Peter. (Who may not know exactly what Neal is planning, but he isn't stupid.)
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Okay, so, one of the things I wanted to address in that fic was obviously how they got Sam's wings, but also, Natasha and Steve re-outfitting themselves. I didn't have a copy of the movie to watch at the time, so I hoped I wasn't violating canon too much in terms of what they were wearing at breakfast and exactly what kind of gear they had later on. But I thought it was a good question -- where did they get the clothes and stuff they have later? Sure, they could just buy some things (and for Steve, they did). But Natasha ...
Natasha, I figured, would have go bags EVERYWHERE, especially in places where she spent a lot of time, like DC. Initially I was just gonna have her retrieve the bag from someplace like a storm drain. But then the graveyard idea occurred to me, and I went OOOOH. :D Because ... what better place to hide something? No one is going to disturb it! And I figured it was very her -- ultra pragmatic, using people's prejudices/superstitions (people don't like digging up graves!) to her advantage. A duffle bag stuffed in a storm drain, or in most of the other hiding places I could think of, would be in danger of discovery from kids, utility workers, etc. Not that she doesn't have drop locations like that, but probably the more easily-located ones would just have stuff like clothing. For a more sensitive bag of goodies, one with weapons and fake ID, she'd want somewhere really unlikely to be found.
And heh, yeah, this is just WAY outside Sam's wheelhouse. He doesn't think like this! Dead drops, hidden bags of guns, all this cloak and dagger stuff -- he has absolutely NO idea what she's up to or even how to react to her. He starts to get a little more relaxed around her later on, but it's probably good that she went off on her own for a bit and gave Steve and Sam some one-on-one time.
(As for Natasha getting in and stealing the wings, I left it deliberately vague since I wasn't entirely sure how she did it, and figured that it didn't really need to be spelled out in great detail, especially since figuring out how to break into a highly secure military installation would have involved some very questionable googling. :D)