Of pilots, doctors and pirates

[selenak]

One of the reasons why I'm glad the Multiverse stories are posted anonymously at first is that I find it intriguing what feedback one does and doesn't get without the name attached. (So far, some nice feedback for my main Multiverse story and the recipient of the pinch-hitting second one liked that one, which is a relief.) Conversely, I read stories without automatically starting with the writers I already know and love. Of course I play the guessing game - that's part of the fun - but I don't know, so the feedback is just for the story.

Some more recommendations:

Dancing in Emptiness (Firefly/Star Wars): River and Yoda. Short and wonderful, this is. Sense of River, Yoda does make. Sense of Yoda, River makes as well, which more difficult is. My admiration the author has.


Home from the Sea (Star Wars/ Star Trek): Oh, Leia. You know, like many a Trekker, I was disappointed with Star Trek: Generations, but here the notion of the nexus is used terrifically, and the enormity of all that Leia lost is brought home in a story where she hasn't lost it at all.

My Crew and Other Animals (Firefly/ Battlestar Galactica): Post-Serenity the Movie: the newest addition to Serenity's crew is one Kara Thrace. Mal point of view (side note: it occurs to me that in those crossovers, River or Mal are by far the most often used pov characters, leaving everyone else in the dust), and everyone is handled very well. The Kara/Inara relationship, and Mal's reaction sound both utterly plausible.

****

In my review of Army of the Dead, I mentioned loving the Doctor/Jackie scenes, and I know I was far from the only one. Here's some excellent meta on Jackie and the Doctor, and why Ten's behaviour towards Jackie (and Mickey) is different from Nine's.

In other news, I squeezed in a PotC: The Curse of the Black Pearl rewatching. It did strike me that, as has been argued in a post someone linked me to when I asked for ELizabeth stories and meta, that you can really make an argument for these movies being Elizabeth's story. Not that they aren't also Jack's and Will's and even James Norrington's, but considering both movies together, I wonder whether the boys are not Rhett and Ashley and Melanie to Elizabeth's Scarlett. We start out with Elizabeth as a girl, singing her pirate song, and "a pirate's life for me" with everything that costs (and that eerie first scene, bringing on the wreckage, does make it clear pirates won't be all fun and games) is what she more and more gets. It's one of the things that makes these movies such clever twists on the cliché, because the cliché would have been Elizabeth-as-love-interest, The Girl, inspiring Will to heroic action and not doing much of anything else. We're getting our first suggestion that this won't be the case when she makes her "parlez" play and negotiates with Barbossa. Who tells her the code won't help her because she's not a pirate. Ah, irony. I do wish they would have kept the "no truth, no truth at all" and the "peas in a pod" scenes with Jack and the short conversation with Norrington within the movie, though, because if you haven't watched those deleted scenes on the dvd, you're truly missing some of where Elizabeth in DMC comes from.

Regarding audience expectations and the confounding of same: Scarlett, of course, comes from a very different novelistic tradition. The novelistic ancestress of The Love Interest aka The Girl would be someone like Rowena in Ivanhoe. Scarlett descends from Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair (and one of the reasons why I had problems with the recent film version was that they softened Becky so much in order to make her a more traditional heroine); she's the heroine of her own story but not the nice girl in same. Instead, the narrative makes her flaws very clear. More Scarlett and ELizabeth similarities: they both start out around age 16 as spoiled children of privilege but at the same time already gifted with vitality and will power. Adverse circumstances bring out their capacity for ruthlessness, which is a good survival skill, but also comes at a price (for other people, not just themselves). And now I wonder/hope whether, Disney rules not withstanding, Elizabeth might not end up with neither boy but her equivalent of Tara, which would be (like it is for Jack) freedom.

Comments

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

I personally feel it VERY likely that Elizabeth might sail off at the end of POTC3 sans any of the guys. At the very least, I see her and Will claiming their own vessel for adventure on the seas instead of returning for a genteel life in Port Royal.

I think Elizabeth's too kind and insightful by halves to be Scarlett, though at this point I am thinking that Scarlett would possibly have been the greatest pirate ever. Ever.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

True about Elizabeth being kind, which Scarlett was not, but then that's what makes them individual characters.

And Scarlett so would have been.

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

"Silk!" Scarlett cried. All thoughts of letting the schooner go evaporated the moment Sam held the opened trunk before her so that she could see -- bolts of silk, wedding-dress white and azalea pink and even apple green. If her hands hadn't been dirty with grease, she would have hugged the bolts of cloth right then and there, and never mind what the deckhands thought. Why, she'd have a different dress made for every day of the week, and the first sailor to laugh at her finery would get himself 30 lashes for his trouble.

"You don't want to do this, Scarlett." Captain Wilkes' gray eyes looked upon her sorrowfully.

"He doesn't want to lose the money, he means," drawled the riverboat gambler she'd picked up in New Orleans, that nasty Mr. Butler. "You'll cost him some of the braid on his shoulders."

"You know I don't give a damn about rank," Wilkes said gravely. "If you do this, Scarlett -- the entire United States Navy will be after you."

"Fiddle dee dee!" Scarlett tossed her head so that her gold earbobs danced merrily in the Caribbean sun. "What do I care about any old navy?"

Butler grinned. "If you don't think they'll hang a lady, you're wrong. Piracy is the sort of thing your better naval officers feel the need to stamp out at any costs. Isn't that right, Captain Wilkes?"

"Though it pains me to say it," Wilkes said with a weary glance at Butler's rakish garb, "he's speaking sense to you, Scarlett, though you won't hear."

"They can't hang me unless they catch me," Scarlett said decidedly. "And they won't catch me. So there."

[thalia-seawood.livejournal.com]

LOL! A new AU is born!

[artaxastra.livejournal.com]

OMG! I will marry you! Ok, maybe not because penknife might object, but I love this. I worship at your fete!

[grimorie.livejournal.com]

Scarlett as a pirate! OMG! This is inspired! I think I'm kinda in love with you now!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Genius! And just for that, I'll be irresponsible and will sign up to the Aliases ficathon after all.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Scarlett would have been a scarily effective pirate.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Not much to say except that I agree. I really like what they've done with Elizabeth. You could indeed make the case that Will's actually the Love Interest, the male "madonna" to Jack's "whore" in Elizabeth's fram of reference. (But where would that leave Norrington?)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Als Melanie. The person Scarlett/Elizabeth thinks of as a prissy obligation at first and whom she then comes to treasure.*g*

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth might not end up with neither boy but her equivalent of Tara, which would be (like it is for Jack) freedom.

Oh, that would be lovely.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*collects votes for "Tara" ending*

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Ooooo, yummy! Recs!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Did you see my earlier ones two posts ago as well?

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Nope!

*scoots off to read*

[thalia-seawood.livejournal.com]

Like your thoughts regarding the parallels regarding Elizabeth and Scarlett.

So Jack equals Rhett Butler and Will has to be Ashley because he's the man the heroine wants at first. Which makes Norrington a parallel to Melanie. *g* And how strange is it that this comparison actually works: At least, they both are deep waters and very generous.

And now I'd like to see swordfighting Melanie. *g*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

There is actually a screencap to go with that - Melly picked up that sword to help Scarlett against the Yankee soldier, after all, and you have the shot with her on the stairs, sword in hand.*g*

[thalia-seawood.livejournal.com]

You'r e right! I totally forgot about this scene. How brilliant!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Hate to say it, but I tried to leave feedback on several stories and couldn't, got an error message every time. It may be the browser I use (Opera), or some other problem, but I couldn't get the form to work at all.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

andrastewhite said she had fixed the problem, and I had no trouble leaving feedback in the last few days. So it might be your browser, but then, I'm a technical ignoramus. You should tell Andraste, though.

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out those Star Wars stories. I don't usually read in that fandom, but that Leia story in particular I would have hated to miss. So very good. I find the quality to be high throughout Multiverse, actually. It's a great challenge.

Scarlett is descended from Becky Sharp! (Though I haven't seen the latest version; I'm too faithful to the BBC mini). I hadn't thought of the Scarlett/Becky thing; this post is full of great connections like that. And I hope that Elizabeth does end up on her own - I don't think she and Will are ready to be married, and Jack's not a good bet for a long term relationship, to say the least. She's got some growing up to do and with them having chosen to make her modern in so many ways, I like the idea of her having her growing-up time on her own.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth is, dare I say it, cookie dough. *g*

Anyway, you're welcome. Though to be fair, I'm far from the first to make the Becky -> Scarlett connection; several of the original reviews did, but then, in the 1930s, Vanity Fair was apparantly far more on the book critics' curriculum. As for the new film version, it has some conscious allusions to GWTW the movie as well as some striking visuals and goes very much against the tasteful pastel look of many Regency tv series and movies, bringing out the colourfulness of the period. (Which I love, and which, if one takes a look at the decorations at the time, is absolutely true.) But like I said, they softened Becky up. For example, she really is a good friend to Amelia from day 1, and of course, that robs the shrugging "oh, for Christ's sake" way Becky disillusions Amelia about George in the end of its power. And she's a good mother. Because no audience likes a female character who isn't a loving mother, you know. And she never ever had sex with Lord Steyn, she just did some heavy petting and withdrew at the last second. Etc.

[artaxastra.livejournal.com]

I want to see all three of them sail off together to a happy (potential)OT3. I want to see Elizabeth get it all. And then write about what she does with it!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

You're a pirate, too.*g*

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course Scarlett is descended from Becky Sharp. The latest production suffered from foreign-right-itis - they made her nicer to make her more saleable. Dunderheads.

< /Snape>

[gelliaclodiana]

Oh! Now that the names are up -- thanks for the recommendation (the River and Yoda piece was my doing.)