Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2019-10-25 10:10 am
thefourthvine) wrote2019-10-25 10:10 am
Entry tags:
Yuletide 2019 Letter
Dear Writer,
Hi!
I am, as always, going to provide you with all the details, because that's what I hope to get from my recipient. But if details aren't your thing, please tap out of this letter now. Just know that I really, really cannot handle child or animal harm or death, and I love you for volunteering to write in one of these tiny fandoms. See you on the 25th!
Or, if you want to know more, read on.
About Me
I love so many things! Here is a small sample:
So that's the general stuff. Let's talk fandoms.
Footloose (1984), Ren McCormack, Willard Hewitt
Request: Can we talk about Ren teaching Willard to dance? They learn the beat together. They do wrestling moves. They slow dance in an empty gym, for god’s sake. THE ENTIRE MONTAGE IS SET TO “LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY,” a song with lyrics that are the exact opposite of platonic. The learning-to-dance montage was the first part of this movie I saw, and I knew, I KNEW, that it had to end with them kissing. It just makes sense! That entire sequence is basically Dirty Dancing except with fewer lifts! But. It was made in 1984, and the characters involved are both guys, and so I guess ... no one noticed that it should end with a kiss?
Please rectify this terrible error. PLEASE MAKE REN AND WILLARD KISS.
Beyond that, it’s really a case of “do as thou wilt.” If you want to give me days of angsty pining and hopeful lust during the learning-to-dance montage, I am so extremely here for that. If you want to give me Ren and Willard running away from small town life together forever, I will be thrilled to pieces. If you want to write fumbling exploration, yes, yes please. If you want to write them meeting up ten or twenty years later, at a high school reunion or a random hotel bar or whatever, and realizing, no, they both WERE hoping the other one would start something during all those gym slow dances, again: sheer delight.
Ren. Willard. True love forever. It’s all I want from this fandom.
Additional Information: Okay, so like approximately every other popular culture everything, I did not see Footloose in my youth, or indeed until last year, when my wife, the redoubtable Best Beloved, realized I knew nothing about it and showed me THIS as my introduction to the movie:
I mean. I MEAN. I watched that, jaw slowly dropping, and I was like, I may not have seen many movies, but I’ve seen enough to know how THIS ends. But it did not end that way, and I was astonished and distressed, and then Best Beloved reminded me that this was made in an era when mainstream movie makers were apparently like, “Heck yeah, let’s have them strip their shirts off and play dude-on-dude volleyball with many loving slow-mo shots and stare intensely into each other’s eyes and shove each other against things. That’s just how dudes dude!” Or, in this case, “Let’s have them dance with each other for weeks on end, and of course that includes slow dancing, and then finish the montage with a literal ‘come in and give me some loving’ gesture, because, again, that’s just dudes being dudes. Didn’t everybody slow dance in an empty gym with their bros in high school?”
(Side note: I realize I’ve only talked about the One Montage to Queer Them All in this, but I did watch the rest of the movie. I am always here for a good dance/gymnastic sequence, and the movie delivered on that front, but I was already set on the Ren/Willard interpretation, so the rest of it did not super work for me. So feel free to include spoilers and characters from the movie or not, as you will.)
There are a lot of fun themes you could work in here -- self-discovery, becoming your true self, escaping horrible places for better places, etc. -- so do whatever you want there. I’m just hoping for you to smush them together forever. Any rating is great for me.
If you want to pick this up, it’s probably on Netflix. It’s definitely available on Amazon Prime for rental or purchase.
Men’s Basketball RPF, Earvin Johnson, Larry Bird
Request: I -- genuinely think Magic Johnson and Larry Bird might have soulbonded at the NCAA Championship in 1979. They certainly went from zero to intense, eternal focus pretty damn quickly. So what I want to know is -- what happened? Where did it go from there? How does that work, when you're playing against each other, when one of you doesn't even LIKE the other, when you're such incredibly different human beings?
If you go with the actual soulbond, there are lots of interesting possibilities here: Larry fighting the bond because of course he would, the way it affected them and their game, how it drove them to play. Or you could talk about how they finally accepted the soulbond and what it's like now, being comfortable with it and each other, years after the fighting and the struggle finally ended. Just, anything.
And if you take the non-soulbond route (which is of course entirely welcome; this definitely doesn't have to be a literal soulbond), just what IS going on? They have SOME kind of bond, that much is clear, and I'd love to hear what it's like: forever friendship, repeating reincarnation as people obsessed with each other, multiverse-spanning romance, whatever. I just want more about this intense *thing* they have going.
I'm good with gen, slash, and poly. Just please no straight-up infidelity. There's always gen, or unmarried AUs, or setting the sex before the marriage, or spousal knowledge and consent (my favorite!), or spousal involvement. Or something else you come up with! LET THE MAGIC (hee!) OF BIRD AND JOHNSON GUIDE YOU, basically.
Additional information: Okay, I am a trifle concerned that my request makes me sound like an exceptionally weird tinhat. No! No! I am merely reporting the truth, which is that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird appear to have a real-life soulbond!
...That didn't help my case. But I have solid evidence. The documentary A Courtship of Rivals (YouTube link to full documentary, but you only need to watch the first ten minutes to see the literal discussion of the soulbond) could not be clearer. These guys are bonded in some way. And I just find that fascinating. You could not have two more different people playing the same game (unless, like, one of them was a Vulcan -- SHUSH NO WRONG FANDOM). You could not have a more intense rivalry. And yet it's abundantly clear they have a ton of respect for each other, a ton of very genuine love for each other, and they know each other so well -- every appearance I've ever seen them in has just been so great for that. We have Magic, dude who loves people, hugs, and fame, and Larry, dude whose basic approach to life is "go away and leave me alone because I have a lot of very important scowling to do," and they love each other, and that is the greatest thing to me.
Basically, I adore these guys. And I am riveted by their great and weird relationship. Anything you write about them navigating that relationship while being their extremely awesome selves will be wonderful.
And if you're up for pairing fic, I would love that, any rating.
To pick this fandom up, watch that documentary. Marvel at its dedication to pushing the soulbond storyline while somehow still being a real documentary!
The Moonstone -- Wilkie Collins, Lucy Yolland, Ezra Jennings
Request: This is an OR, not an AND request. I basically just want one of the sad people I read as queer in this novel to have happier endings than the ones they get. You do not have to put both characters in your story.
So, if you’re here to write about Lucy Yolland: oh my god. She was CLEARLY in love with Rosanna (I know, I know, but these are my queer teen biases talking and I WILL NOT HEAR OTHERWISE) and she had a plan to escape her parents’ shack and that village and go to London with her girlfriend, and then her girlfriend FALLS FOR SOME ASSHOLE DUDE and spoilers happen. It’s so sad. Please just give her a happy ending of some kind. If you want to write an AU in which she and Rosanna do make that London trip, yay! If you want to write her finding a new love and a new life somewhere other than that fishing village, yay! If you want to roll ahead twenty or thirty years and give us a glimpse of Lucy’s MUCH HAPPIER life, please do! I just ... I just want her to be happy. While still being extremely I-will-fucking-kill-you-with-my-glare Lucy Yolland.
If you’re here for Ezra Jennings: I am just so sad about his horrible life and everyone being awful to him and his only joy being bringing happiness into someone else’s life. (And I do of course read him as queer. Like. That secret accusation that follows him around ruining things? I think it was queerness. I also think that he may not be telling the truth about the gender of the love of his life he will never see again. QUEER TEEN HEADCANONS ARE WITH YOU FOR ETERNITY. You cannot escape them.) Please find a happy ending for him. If you want to write him in an OT3 with Franklin (who he CLEARLY had the hots for, come on) and Rachel, I am here for it. If you want an AU where his lost love comes to rescue him after inheriting a large fortune, I am here for it. Or whatever. I am absolutely here for just ANY happy ending at ALL because his entire life is a tragedy and I love him.
Additional Information: Okay, so I read this book as a teen, and then I read it again and again and AGAIN. I read several print copies to death before I switched to the ebook. I acknowledge that this book has flaws, and I love it anyway. It has humor! Brilliant characters! An artifact actually returning to the people it belongs to! Multiple narrators! Documents in the case! Inversions of so many Victorian tropes! My love is real and enduring.
So honestly I am here for any fic that sounds and feels like the book, but more queer and happier for these specific characters. I just -- I love basically all of the characters (the exception is Miss Clack, though I do love to laugh at her horribleness), and I want them to be happy, and some of them are not happy.
If you’re writing about Lucy -- she is the BEST. I just love how fighty she is, how clearly PISSED OFF she is by her assigned place in life, and how she is actively working to do something about it, despite assorted (terrible) setbacks. I also love the scene where she looks at Franklin Blake, the dude everyone else thinks is super amazing, Our Hero, and does the classic lesbian, “What the fuck is THIS good for?” thing. She’s a great minor character, and she deserved better than just being forgotten after her part in the narrative ended. Also she deserved a happy ending. (And a girlfriend who was ALIVE.)
If you’re writing about Ezra -- oh man. I love my mixed-race, science-minded tragedy boy. He solves the entire mystery while Franklin is basically going, “Idk what to do now. Help, I’m confused.” (I do like Franklin Blake, but he is not good at detection OR at life, and quite honestly that is part of what is great about him.) And then HE thanks FRANKLIN for bringing him some happiness at the end of his miserable life. Like. This is a man who has been beaten down by fate and who no longer expects anything at all for himself. I know it’s kind of hard to write around the ending, but -- AUs exist! And there was all that stuff Candy said about the unmarked grave -- maybe he was just covering up Ezra’s Grand Escape to his new life? I know I’m reaching here, but I just. I want better for him than what the narrative gave him.
If you want to pick this up: It’s a fast read, and it’s free from Gutenberg.
Nomads (1986) — Eileen Flax, Veronique Pommier
Request: These women have, by the end of the movie, a relationship that was made for fic, and so I’m hoping for something set after the movie. How do things go when you simultaneously remember someone as your new friend made while surviving a terrible ordeal and your beloved wife? What’s it like when you’re on the run with someone you barely know except she also has the memories of the person you know and love best in the world?
And there’s also the issue of practical matters. How do they live? Eileen’s ability to practice medicine is going to be somewhat limited, at least at first, since being on the run from evil tends to inhibit your ability to obtain a license and a job. Does she become a doctor for people with paranormal maladies, or for supernatural people, or just for other people on the run? And what does Veronique, who came to this country hoping for some peaceful downtime and did not at all get that do after the trauma of the movie?
I would be delighted with femslash. I would be delighted with gen. I would be delighted with them turning around and taking the battle to the Nomads (though how, I cannot possibly tell you). I would be delighted with them encountering a new kind of evil and becoming a two-woman, three-sets-of-memories supernatural detection team. I just want to know how things go after the movie ends for these two. And please please please give them some kind of happily ever after, or the potential for one.
Additional information: I have a somewhat questionable history with this movie. Back when movie rentals were still a thing you went to an actual store to do, my sister rented this movie approximately 3.5 million times. (She was extremely into an actor appearing in it. You could very reasonably ask why she didn’t just buy the movie, but I have no answer for that, except possibly a desire to give all of her money to rental companies. I suspect her eventual loss of interest in this movie is what caused Blockbuster to go out of business.) I mostly watched it with her, technically, but unfortunately this was before I could understand movies, so I was largely watching an entirely different movie (with similar dialogue) in my head.
Many years later, my wife and I watched it together, and once I understood what I was watching I immediately came to an important realization: for me, this movie is essentially one long prologue to fic. Like, okay, I’m sorry, but Eileen literally has Veronique’s dead husband’s memories and they literally drive off into the sunset together to make a new life. I just ... feel like that needs exploring, you know? I mean, yay Nomads, yay vaguely creepy paranormal whatever, but what of the relationship?
And these are two fascinating women. I mean, Veronique takes in a woman who is apparently insane and ranting and who seems to know her dead husband way too well and is incredibly kind to her, even though Niki’s life is, at that point, going SUPER not well. And Eileen is this analytical, problem-solving person who is going to find out what happened and fix this problem even if it, you know, destroys her life and drives her insane. (Also, her first thought when she wakes up in Veronique’s bed is apparently “Wait, did we have sex?” I am just saying. It was not far from Eileen’s mind. The possibility is clearly there.) They are both willing to burn down lives they loved to stay alive, and I believe that means they can build something new in the ashes. I love them both, and hope they find happiness on the other side of their Nomad-Related Life Implosion.
This is technically a horror movie, but a) it’s so non-horrifying that I, a noted wimp, can watch it even after dark (except the deeply creepy abbey/nun sequence, because I am still a wimp) and b) I’m not really here for the horror aspect. I mean, okay, Pierce Brosnan, vaguely punkish Nomads acting like people in a gang in a movie, memory stealing, fine, that’s all good. But. Well. It’s not actually my focus. My focus is on how people survive events this weird, how they make new lives after surviving, and how it all affects them.
I will be happy with any rating you care to write on this one. If you’re going to write a pairing, I’m only really interested in Eileen/Veronique here.
If you want to pick this up — uh, it’s on Netfix, I think? It’s definitely available for rental on Amazon. And there’s also this copy, although I cannot vouch for its quality, on YouTube.
Hi!
I am, as always, going to provide you with all the details, because that's what I hope to get from my recipient. But if details aren't your thing, please tap out of this letter now. Just know that I really, really cannot handle child or animal harm or death, and I love you for volunteering to write in one of these tiny fandoms. See you on the 25th!
Or, if you want to know more, read on.
About Me
I love so many things! Here is a small sample:
- Happy endings. (Um, I mean of the everyone lives happily ever after kind. Although I am also a big fan of orgasms, not gonna lie.)
- Humor.
- Slow burn romances and slow build sex scenes.
- Action and adventure.
- Snappy dialogue.
- Classic fan fiction tropes, whether played straight or inverted. (Soulbonds! Werewolves! Bodyswap! Arranged marriages! Fake dating! Amnesia! And so on.)
- Families (found, biological, synthetic, hologrammatic, whatever) being good to each other.
- Robots, spaceships, aliens, space opera, military science fiction.
- Urban fantasy, magical politics, dryads in backwards Dodgers caps, parking spells, secret libraries full of Starbucks-sipping, bluetooth-headset-wearing magical theory students.
- People who have problems with feelings.
- Pining and denial of the I-am-definitely-not-feeling-anything kind.
- Animal and child harm or death. These are my only dealbreakers; I can't handle them at all.
- Embarrassment and humiliation.
- Rape.
- The abuse of women.
- Infidelity.
- Zombies or cannibalism.
- Character death or characters with cancer or other terminal diseases.
- Pairings with big power imbalances -- teacher/student, doctor/patient, huge age gaps, etc -- or a male/female power imbalance with the woman on the less powerful end.
- Unhappy endings.
So that's the general stuff. Let's talk fandoms.
Footloose (1984), Ren McCormack, Willard Hewitt
Request: Can we talk about Ren teaching Willard to dance? They learn the beat together. They do wrestling moves. They slow dance in an empty gym, for god’s sake. THE ENTIRE MONTAGE IS SET TO “LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE BOY,” a song with lyrics that are the exact opposite of platonic. The learning-to-dance montage was the first part of this movie I saw, and I knew, I KNEW, that it had to end with them kissing. It just makes sense! That entire sequence is basically Dirty Dancing except with fewer lifts! But. It was made in 1984, and the characters involved are both guys, and so I guess ... no one noticed that it should end with a kiss?
Please rectify this terrible error. PLEASE MAKE REN AND WILLARD KISS.
Beyond that, it’s really a case of “do as thou wilt.” If you want to give me days of angsty pining and hopeful lust during the learning-to-dance montage, I am so extremely here for that. If you want to give me Ren and Willard running away from small town life together forever, I will be thrilled to pieces. If you want to write fumbling exploration, yes, yes please. If you want to write them meeting up ten or twenty years later, at a high school reunion or a random hotel bar or whatever, and realizing, no, they both WERE hoping the other one would start something during all those gym slow dances, again: sheer delight.
Ren. Willard. True love forever. It’s all I want from this fandom.
Additional Information: Okay, so like approximately every other popular culture everything, I did not see Footloose in my youth, or indeed until last year, when my wife, the redoubtable Best Beloved, realized I knew nothing about it and showed me THIS as my introduction to the movie:
I mean. I MEAN. I watched that, jaw slowly dropping, and I was like, I may not have seen many movies, but I’ve seen enough to know how THIS ends. But it did not end that way, and I was astonished and distressed, and then Best Beloved reminded me that this was made in an era when mainstream movie makers were apparently like, “Heck yeah, let’s have them strip their shirts off and play dude-on-dude volleyball with many loving slow-mo shots and stare intensely into each other’s eyes and shove each other against things. That’s just how dudes dude!” Or, in this case, “Let’s have them dance with each other for weeks on end, and of course that includes slow dancing, and then finish the montage with a literal ‘come in and give me some loving’ gesture, because, again, that’s just dudes being dudes. Didn’t everybody slow dance in an empty gym with their bros in high school?”
(Side note: I realize I’ve only talked about the One Montage to Queer Them All in this, but I did watch the rest of the movie. I am always here for a good dance/gymnastic sequence, and the movie delivered on that front, but I was already set on the Ren/Willard interpretation, so the rest of it did not super work for me. So feel free to include spoilers and characters from the movie or not, as you will.)
There are a lot of fun themes you could work in here -- self-discovery, becoming your true self, escaping horrible places for better places, etc. -- so do whatever you want there. I’m just hoping for you to smush them together forever. Any rating is great for me.
If you want to pick this up, it’s probably on Netflix. It’s definitely available on Amazon Prime for rental or purchase.
Men’s Basketball RPF, Earvin Johnson, Larry Bird
Request: I -- genuinely think Magic Johnson and Larry Bird might have soulbonded at the NCAA Championship in 1979. They certainly went from zero to intense, eternal focus pretty damn quickly. So what I want to know is -- what happened? Where did it go from there? How does that work, when you're playing against each other, when one of you doesn't even LIKE the other, when you're such incredibly different human beings?
If you go with the actual soulbond, there are lots of interesting possibilities here: Larry fighting the bond because of course he would, the way it affected them and their game, how it drove them to play. Or you could talk about how they finally accepted the soulbond and what it's like now, being comfortable with it and each other, years after the fighting and the struggle finally ended. Just, anything.
And if you take the non-soulbond route (which is of course entirely welcome; this definitely doesn't have to be a literal soulbond), just what IS going on? They have SOME kind of bond, that much is clear, and I'd love to hear what it's like: forever friendship, repeating reincarnation as people obsessed with each other, multiverse-spanning romance, whatever. I just want more about this intense *thing* they have going.
I'm good with gen, slash, and poly. Just please no straight-up infidelity. There's always gen, or unmarried AUs, or setting the sex before the marriage, or spousal knowledge and consent (my favorite!), or spousal involvement. Or something else you come up with! LET THE MAGIC (hee!) OF BIRD AND JOHNSON GUIDE YOU, basically.
Additional information: Okay, I am a trifle concerned that my request makes me sound like an exceptionally weird tinhat. No! No! I am merely reporting the truth, which is that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird appear to have a real-life soulbond!
...That didn't help my case. But I have solid evidence. The documentary A Courtship of Rivals (YouTube link to full documentary, but you only need to watch the first ten minutes to see the literal discussion of the soulbond) could not be clearer. These guys are bonded in some way. And I just find that fascinating. You could not have two more different people playing the same game (unless, like, one of them was a Vulcan -- SHUSH NO WRONG FANDOM). You could not have a more intense rivalry. And yet it's abundantly clear they have a ton of respect for each other, a ton of very genuine love for each other, and they know each other so well -- every appearance I've ever seen them in has just been so great for that. We have Magic, dude who loves people, hugs, and fame, and Larry, dude whose basic approach to life is "go away and leave me alone because I have a lot of very important scowling to do," and they love each other, and that is the greatest thing to me.
Basically, I adore these guys. And I am riveted by their great and weird relationship. Anything you write about them navigating that relationship while being their extremely awesome selves will be wonderful.
And if you're up for pairing fic, I would love that, any rating.
To pick this fandom up, watch that documentary. Marvel at its dedication to pushing the soulbond storyline while somehow still being a real documentary!
The Moonstone -- Wilkie Collins, Lucy Yolland, Ezra Jennings
Request: This is an OR, not an AND request. I basically just want one of the sad people I read as queer in this novel to have happier endings than the ones they get. You do not have to put both characters in your story.
So, if you’re here to write about Lucy Yolland: oh my god. She was CLEARLY in love with Rosanna (I know, I know, but these are my queer teen biases talking and I WILL NOT HEAR OTHERWISE) and she had a plan to escape her parents’ shack and that village and go to London with her girlfriend, and then her girlfriend FALLS FOR SOME ASSHOLE DUDE and spoilers happen. It’s so sad. Please just give her a happy ending of some kind. If you want to write an AU in which she and Rosanna do make that London trip, yay! If you want to write her finding a new love and a new life somewhere other than that fishing village, yay! If you want to roll ahead twenty or thirty years and give us a glimpse of Lucy’s MUCH HAPPIER life, please do! I just ... I just want her to be happy. While still being extremely I-will-fucking-kill-you-with-my-glare Lucy Yolland.
If you’re here for Ezra Jennings: I am just so sad about his horrible life and everyone being awful to him and his only joy being bringing happiness into someone else’s life. (And I do of course read him as queer. Like. That secret accusation that follows him around ruining things? I think it was queerness. I also think that he may not be telling the truth about the gender of the love of his life he will never see again. QUEER TEEN HEADCANONS ARE WITH YOU FOR ETERNITY. You cannot escape them.) Please find a happy ending for him. If you want to write him in an OT3 with Franklin (who he CLEARLY had the hots for, come on) and Rachel, I am here for it. If you want an AU where his lost love comes to rescue him after inheriting a large fortune, I am here for it. Or whatever. I am absolutely here for just ANY happy ending at ALL because his entire life is a tragedy and I love him.
Additional Information: Okay, so I read this book as a teen, and then I read it again and again and AGAIN. I read several print copies to death before I switched to the ebook. I acknowledge that this book has flaws, and I love it anyway. It has humor! Brilliant characters! An artifact actually returning to the people it belongs to! Multiple narrators! Documents in the case! Inversions of so many Victorian tropes! My love is real and enduring.
So honestly I am here for any fic that sounds and feels like the book, but more queer and happier for these specific characters. I just -- I love basically all of the characters (the exception is Miss Clack, though I do love to laugh at her horribleness), and I want them to be happy, and some of them are not happy.
If you’re writing about Lucy -- she is the BEST. I just love how fighty she is, how clearly PISSED OFF she is by her assigned place in life, and how she is actively working to do something about it, despite assorted (terrible) setbacks. I also love the scene where she looks at Franklin Blake, the dude everyone else thinks is super amazing, Our Hero, and does the classic lesbian, “What the fuck is THIS good for?” thing. She’s a great minor character, and she deserved better than just being forgotten after her part in the narrative ended. Also she deserved a happy ending. (And a girlfriend who was ALIVE.)
If you’re writing about Ezra -- oh man. I love my mixed-race, science-minded tragedy boy. He solves the entire mystery while Franklin is basically going, “Idk what to do now. Help, I’m confused.” (I do like Franklin Blake, but he is not good at detection OR at life, and quite honestly that is part of what is great about him.) And then HE thanks FRANKLIN for bringing him some happiness at the end of his miserable life. Like. This is a man who has been beaten down by fate and who no longer expects anything at all for himself. I know it’s kind of hard to write around the ending, but -- AUs exist! And there was all that stuff Candy said about the unmarked grave -- maybe he was just covering up Ezra’s Grand Escape to his new life? I know I’m reaching here, but I just. I want better for him than what the narrative gave him.
If you want to pick this up: It’s a fast read, and it’s free from Gutenberg.
Nomads (1986) — Eileen Flax, Veronique Pommier
Request: These women have, by the end of the movie, a relationship that was made for fic, and so I’m hoping for something set after the movie. How do things go when you simultaneously remember someone as your new friend made while surviving a terrible ordeal and your beloved wife? What’s it like when you’re on the run with someone you barely know except she also has the memories of the person you know and love best in the world?
And there’s also the issue of practical matters. How do they live? Eileen’s ability to practice medicine is going to be somewhat limited, at least at first, since being on the run from evil tends to inhibit your ability to obtain a license and a job. Does she become a doctor for people with paranormal maladies, or for supernatural people, or just for other people on the run? And what does Veronique, who came to this country hoping for some peaceful downtime and did not at all get that do after the trauma of the movie?
I would be delighted with femslash. I would be delighted with gen. I would be delighted with them turning around and taking the battle to the Nomads (though how, I cannot possibly tell you). I would be delighted with them encountering a new kind of evil and becoming a two-woman, three-sets-of-memories supernatural detection team. I just want to know how things go after the movie ends for these two. And please please please give them some kind of happily ever after, or the potential for one.
Additional information: I have a somewhat questionable history with this movie. Back when movie rentals were still a thing you went to an actual store to do, my sister rented this movie approximately 3.5 million times. (She was extremely into an actor appearing in it. You could very reasonably ask why she didn’t just buy the movie, but I have no answer for that, except possibly a desire to give all of her money to rental companies. I suspect her eventual loss of interest in this movie is what caused Blockbuster to go out of business.) I mostly watched it with her, technically, but unfortunately this was before I could understand movies, so I was largely watching an entirely different movie (with similar dialogue) in my head.
Many years later, my wife and I watched it together, and once I understood what I was watching I immediately came to an important realization: for me, this movie is essentially one long prologue to fic. Like, okay, I’m sorry, but Eileen literally has Veronique’s dead husband’s memories and they literally drive off into the sunset together to make a new life. I just ... feel like that needs exploring, you know? I mean, yay Nomads, yay vaguely creepy paranormal whatever, but what of the relationship?
And these are two fascinating women. I mean, Veronique takes in a woman who is apparently insane and ranting and who seems to know her dead husband way too well and is incredibly kind to her, even though Niki’s life is, at that point, going SUPER not well. And Eileen is this analytical, problem-solving person who is going to find out what happened and fix this problem even if it, you know, destroys her life and drives her insane. (Also, her first thought when she wakes up in Veronique’s bed is apparently “Wait, did we have sex?” I am just saying. It was not far from Eileen’s mind. The possibility is clearly there.) They are both willing to burn down lives they loved to stay alive, and I believe that means they can build something new in the ashes. I love them both, and hope they find happiness on the other side of their Nomad-Related Life Implosion.
This is technically a horror movie, but a) it’s so non-horrifying that I, a noted wimp, can watch it even after dark (except the deeply creepy abbey/nun sequence, because I am still a wimp) and b) I’m not really here for the horror aspect. I mean, okay, Pierce Brosnan, vaguely punkish Nomads acting like people in a gang in a movie, memory stealing, fine, that’s all good. But. Well. It’s not actually my focus. My focus is on how people survive events this weird, how they make new lives after surviving, and how it all affects them.
I will be happy with any rating you care to write on this one. If you’re going to write a pairing, I’m only really interested in Eileen/Veronique here.
If you want to pick this up — uh, it’s on Netfix, I think? It’s definitely available for rental on Amazon. And there’s also this copy, although I cannot vouch for its quality, on YouTube.
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Thank you for letting me know! It should be fixed now. <3
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...there are people who didn't know and acknowledge this‽
HOW.
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...that sounds wrong. It's just so hard to write these things and yours captures so many things I like and don't like. <3
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