Purim Gifts 2013 - I Got Fic

[elrhiarhodan]

This was the first year I participated in the Purim Gifts exchange and I received three wonderful West Wing fics from Seekingferret:

Pilot [Getting The Commandments Right Remix]. From the first time I saw it, I thought that last five minutes of the Pilot episode for The West Wing was the best five minutes of television ever created. This fic reminded me that yes, it they are still the best five minutes of television.

The Day Before [the Am Yisrael Remix]. Watching The West Wing during the George W. Bush years was a welcome respite from the sneering anti-intellectualism that permeated the White House. The fictional president, Jed Bartlet, was a man of insatiable intellectual curiosity, often to the dismay of his senior staff. And when it came to matters of religion, his ability to fall down the rabbit hole was unmatched.

20 Hours in America [The Acheinu Kol Beit Yisrael remix]. As much as The West Wing enjoyed the big picture, the issues - it was the small and quiet moments between extraordinary and extraordinarily decent people that made the show such an addictive pleasure.

Please go read these three short ficlets. If you aren't familiar with The West Wing, you may just find yourself a new fandom. If you are already a fan, you'll swear that these scenes are really canon. Seekingferret captured the moments and the voices impeccably.

Comments

[embroiderama]

I think there's a general West Wing renaissance going on now that it's streaming on Netflix. I know I've been rewatching sporadically, and WOW it's good to be reminded of how smart that show was.

[leonie-alastair.livejournal.com]

I have such a love/hate relationship with The West Wing. I adore 85% of the interactions - but the other 15% hit my embarrassment squick so hard that I rarely watched it when it was broadcast. I'm slowly rewatching the series on netflix, where I can fast forward through the bits that make me cringe.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendations. I'm glad you enjoyed them.

You wrote that several times in your comments, "you'll swear that these scenes are really canon", and it worried me a little bit. What I was attempting to do in these stories is a little inside-baseball, and I worried that people who knew West Wing but hadn't memorized it wouldn't quite get it.

So I want to make sure you did understand what I was doing. The reason the dialogue sounds like canon is that except for one or two sentences in each story, the dialogue is canon, straight from Sorkin. These scenes are canon. What I did in each case was tell the scene in Toby's perspective and changed one or two lines to fix what I considered to be a flaw in Sorkin's representation of Toby's Jewish life. These are my headcanon versions of three canon scenes.

It's a little subtle- I hope you caught it.

[elrhiarhodan]

I do have to say that yes, I recognized the scenes in each vignette, but not the precise dialogue. It has been a few years since I've watched the show and my memory of most of the actual conversations are dim.

What I was trying to say was that I expect I'll be confused when I do watch these scenes again - expecting the conversation to go one way (your version), but it goes the other way (the Sorkin version), instead.

Regardless, I love them and I appreciate what you did with these moments.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, I'm glad you at least remembered the scenes well enough to get the concept.

Don't think of it as being confused. This has been my headcanon of these scenes for many rewatches, so just think of it as sharing my headcanon.

[damietta.livejournal.com]

Gosh, this makes me want to search for really good West Wing fics.

I loved the show immensely and when I happen upon stories like this (I loved Seekingferret's explanation of it being Toby's POV) it makes me miss the show even more.