elrhiarhodan | Entries tagged with meta

Normally, I reserve reaction posts for season finales, and let the Dish do my talking during the season. With Taking Account I find myself scratching my head (and not because of any skin problems), and quite a few things that got left out of the Dish that I want to take the time to explore in more detail.

( My own thinky thoughts, complete with teal deer )

I don't know if I should apologise for spamming your flists yesterday, but Danger'verse came back on line, and I had a hard time stopping it. It was like someone flipped a switch in my head.

( Teal Deer Ahead! Way too much naval-gazing about the Danger'verse and the writing process. )

Many thanks to

doctor_fangeek for alerting me to this.

It seems that Jeff Eastin and the White Collar writers have taken quite a beating on Twitter over the origins of the Nazi treasure. Like me, the fans are very perturbed that Neal and Moz have no obvious regrets about taking art that was stolen from the Nazi's victims, Jewish or otherwise.

Back in March after the S2 finale,

jrosemary and I did a point-counterpoint in White Collar Fixation regarding this issue. I was outraged. I still am.

But apparently, the art was not stolen from individuals. Jim Campolongo has tweeted an explanation.

( Since this is potentially a huge spoiler, I've put it under the cut. )

Many thanks to

The advanced screening for the Season 3 Premier last night on Pier 46 in Hudson River Park was, in a word, excellent. The day was blessed by the gods, there was free food, beverages, tee shirts, magazines. The chairs were mostly comfortable, the crowd was into it - mellow and happy. But it wasn't a crush scene at all. All in all, very metro New York.

Sadly, Tatt DeBomer wasn't there.

The episode itself was terrific. Tightly scriped, well played, no stupid gimmicks (you all know how I felt about the finale of Season 2, right?). My buddy,

jrosemary, has an excellent analysis / initial thoughts post on White Collar Fixation as well as her LJ (will link when I can access). It's not full of serious spoilers - but there are some.

I'm not ready to do an analysis - I think I'm going to take a while and digest. ( But if you want serious spoilers, I'm happy to provide. Click at you're own risk. )

Thinky Thoughts on Seminal Scenes is a series of essays, originally written for White Collar Fixation, that explores a specific scene or group of scenes in each episode of White Collar. Sometimes I focus on a scene I like (most of the time), other times, I'll take a look at a scene that (to me) doesn't really work.

Because I am an orderly and (somewhat) organized type of person, I am beginning with Pilot and working my way forward, episode by episode. I know that some of these scenes (particularly for Pilot) have analyzed to death, but I hope you find a nugget of something interesting and worth commenting on.

( “Help me out here, you’re the romantic. What’s the deal with the bottle?” )

( There are three basic legal systems every White Collar case!fic writer should be aware of and use accordingly. )

Crossposted to

wcwu

Current Music: I Fought the Law - The Clash

There are a lot of new writers (YEAH!) in this fandom, and one of the things I've noticed is the somewhat erratic spelling of character names. I may be overly picky, but nothing takes me out of a fic's headspace quicker than misspelling a character's name (or nickname). So, for your interest and edification:

Peter Burke - We don't know his middle name, and I've spent quite some time looking at closeups of his FBI id. It looks like his middle initial is "J," but I can't confirm that.
ETA, as

queenaeron reminded me - Peter is never Pete or Petey, unless you are trying to piss Peter off in your story.

Neal Caffrey - It's Neal as in "steal" - (to borrow from a wonderful fic whose title and author I can't remember). It's not Neil or Niel (either of which are common Celtic spellings).

Elizabeth Burke's nickname is "El" not "Elle" or "Ellie". Leaked script pages have confirmed this multiple times.

Clinton Jones - Yeah, he has a first name and it's been used once or twice.

Diana Berrigan - Diana's character page on USA Network's website has it as Berrigan, not Barrigan. Her girlfriend's name is Christie. And if you're just catching up, for the original Pilot promo, it was Diana Lancing, but not anymore.

Reese Hughes - Spelled Reese, not Reece in the leaked sides.

Crossposted to

wcwu

Jessica Freely's (

annesible ) excellent blog, Friskbiskit (the one that pointed the way for me to the White Collar fandom back in January) has a link to an excellent article about the relationship between slash and the emergence of gay rights in America (and beyond). The article, "Has Slash Made The World Better For Gay Men? appears in AfterElton, and is the first of two parts.

The article opens by making the connection that the very first slash story - “Ring of Shoshern,” about a relationship between Kirk and Spock, published the year before the Stonewall riots in New York City, was an equally important moment for gay rights.

Rather than recap this excellent and thoughtful piece here, I'm going to ask you to read it and let me know what you think.

Life is full of coincidences.

The (in)famous wine bottle from Season 1 was an '82 Bordeaux. I never really bought Neal's candy-sweet story about how he bought the empty bottle and filled it with cheap wine because he couldn't afford the real thing - it was a "promise of a better life." Everything since has pointed to Neal having lots of cash on hand, and he could "always get more" - so playing the poor romantic slob seemed to be a huge plot hole.

Anyway, a dear friend of mine - a winemaker amongst other things - just sent me an email (he's the friend I'll be staying with in Seattle in October):

"Speaking of wine, last night, we were at a friend's for dinner. They had recently acquired (and served) a NICE 1982 gran cru Bordeaux. I looked it up on a wine price site and found out that that bottle is (was!) worth AT LEAST $450 and maybe as much as $800."

While Mozzie can pull out $10,000 in cash from a storage unit to lend to the FBI (as well as pay cash for a bakery), maybe Neal would balk at paying $800 for a single bottle of wine.

What do you think?

ETA: I just watched that scene (I have the series on my iPad) and I completely had forgotten that Peter (yes, Peter) says "It costs $800 bucks a pop." Mr. Burke knows his wines, apparently. Something that Neal's forgotten by the time "Bottleneck" rolls around.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Music: Seventeen Again - Eurythmics (Peace)

I had a pretty sucky day yesterday. Not only did I lose a huge chunk of my WC/CM fic, I burned up a whole evening trying to attend a political fundraiser (long story, funny - but I don't feel like telling it. It proves that I am, in truth, an idiot).

So, I get home and find this incredible comment from shea about how much she loved Part III of my Public Sex fic - and was specific about what worked for her and why (the best type of concrit). And all the annoyance of the day just slipped away.

One of the reasons why I had sort of abandoned Public Sex was I couldn't figure out how to actually get P/E/N to have sex in the Met - thus filling the prompt. I know the Metropolitan Museum of Art pretty well, and there's really no place on a Saturday that's out of the way enough for coupling without getting arrested, except maybe a bathroom (and that's really not Public Sex).

I was also having a hard time (pun intended) with Public Sex because I was getting too wrapped up in how to fit the story into canon. Truth of the matter - when it comes to PWP, do canon details REALLY MATTER?

So, anyway. Shea writes this wonderful comment on how much she loves Sex!Fairy El - and everything clicks. Since El is the catalyst for the kink, she needs tell the meat of the story (the sex) from her own POV. I started Part IV at 9 pm, and worked steadily until nearly 1:45 am, did a quick edit (and not a very good job of it, I hate to say - major grammar cleanup in Aisle 3 this morning).

I don't know where the story came from - it sort of wrote itself. I usually work all the details out in my head before commiting them to text - but this one (like my Aftermath fic) sprung full blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Shea was the hammer that cracked my skull opened. If you like Part IV of Public Sex (A/K/A New York, New York), please be sure to thank her.