Obscure Fandom no.1. Much waffle ensues

[louiselux]

I'm not holding our much hope for my obscure fandom to lose its yellowness at While We Tell of Yuletide Treasures

My obscure fandom is Thief: the Metal Age. It's a computer game. No one is going to want to write it. The pairing I chose was Garrett/Mysterious Hooded Keeper Dude

It's all so shadowy and the animated parts are creepy and Garret is snarky and cynical. He is so doing it with Mysterious Keeper Friend. There's some Thief fanfic on FF.net, but sadly, because it's a game, the writers give into the temptation to just describe a game, which is very boring. Also, no slash. I get the impression if I wrote Garrett/Keeper slash and posted it there that I'd be taunted by 15 year old boys for the rest of my life. Not that I'd care or that that would stop me, obviously.

Some other fandoms that left me faintly boggled and are still unclaimed are:

Footloose (Kevin Bacon, those jeans, that dance sequence in the big shed! My eyes!)
The Goon Show
Inspector Morse
The Sweeney
Lovejoy
(What, no Bergerac?)

I recently stumbled across a very good Inspector Morse fic; Oak and Mistletoe by Sue Jenkins. Her Lewis is so good, to the point where he can utter the line, 'I love you, sir' and it's utterly believable. Not only is it believable, Lewis says it while Morse is vomiting his guts out during a hangover. It's the most touching, well written scene. And not only that, but at a later point Morse says 'you're beautiful, Lewis,' and that's utterly believable too. It sounds like a parody, I know, but it really worked for me. One part of the story that I thought didn't work so well was the casual way Lewis's wife and kids were shunted out of the way. I keep thinking about this story. I'm not a big Morse fan, and have no real desire to slash Morse and Lewis. The story has a serious flaw with Lewis's family. What I admire about it is the way the writer captured perfectly the characters voices, to the point where I could see and hear them in my head saying those lines and I find that a rare experience in fanfic, especially so in fanfic based on a visual medium. So I guess that strong, compelling characterisation can pull me through a story, even if I don't care about the characters to begin with and there are things I really don't like about the plot.

Moving on from Morse, here are other obscure fandoms that need to be written for, that sadly I can't:

Saki's short stories
Fenndom
James Bond
Grosse Point Blank
Yes Minister

*

And, puffing visibly, I wrote a whole 3710 Nano words today.

Comments

Oak and Mistletoe

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I remember that Morse/Lewis story, and you're right: it worked. It was brilliant. Voices of Morse and Lewis were exactly right.

I did regret Lewis's wife getting shuffled off out of the way, but at least it wasn't done hatefully - it would have spoiled the story (for me) if the writer had decided to have her turn out to be a bitch. And she does get one of the best lines - when Lewis is saying "Do we know any gay people?" she says "Well, your friend Inspector Morse."

Re: Oak and Mistletoe

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a brilliant line, and part of a great scene. In fact, that's one of my favourite scenes in the story.

Yo do have a point with Lewis's wife. Hateful would have been awful. I just thought the explanantion of why thier marriage failed was too casually handled and too convenient to be satisfying.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I love Lovejoy. Loved the series, loved the books by Jonathan Gash. I love the Inspector Morse series and have all the books by Colin Dexter, except for the last one.

That said, I wouldn't dare write either one. Lovejoy is an expert on antiques. Morse is an expert on British crossword puzzles (which are so different from American ones as to be a different species) and opera. Lewis, as I recall, knows every last detail about every cricket game since the beginning of the twentieth century--and he's a good...well, we'd say "pitcher," but I think it's "bowler" in cricket.

Both series are highly intelligent mysteries about highly intelligent characters. I shouldn't like to get them wrong. Maybe that's why no one has chosen them yet.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I never got into either of them, but then I'm not a great fan crime/mystery novels or series'. I can absolutely see why they'd be scary to write. Not only do you have to have the specialist knowledge, and also the procedural knowledge of how crimes are handled, you have to be able to come up with a killer plot. No pun intended.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I'm also sorry that the Obscure Fandom Secret Santa is asking for pairings rather than just for characters. That would seem to limit the stories to romances, and not everyone likes writing romances.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

The point of it seems to be about obscure pairings that otherwise would never be written, or not written very often, so that dictates the slash element. But I don't think that necessarily limits things to romance. I mean, you could have a PWP too. Only joking.

Maybe you could ask them, or ask on the lj to see what they think about a gen story? I'm sure someone would be happy just to see one of their favourite obscure characters in a fic, even if they weren't paired off with anyone.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

The point of it seems to be about obscure pairings that otherwise would never be written, or not written very often, so that dictates the slash element. But I don't think that necessarily limits things to romance. I mean, you could have a PWP too. Only joking.

Heh. I know. I just tend to think of romances and sex fics in the same category.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

And what's wrong with 'The Sweeney'? Other than the fact that I refuse to believe in its slashability, obviously. I want some recs for gen Sweeney fics to read when I've watched all of S1 on DVD.

Gina

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with The Sweeney, it's a fine program in every respect except for the clawing out my eyeballs that ensues when I think of slashing Reagan and Carter. Not that I think about it that much, you understand.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I prefer not to think of it at all.

Gina

[canthlian.livejournal.com]

Excuse me while I jump the lower_tadfield community, slide into a post, and then pounce on you for not only helping me traumatise most of my contact list with Aziraphale's underpants, but also for being, so far, the only other person I've found who thinks Thief is slashy in any way.

*Cough*

Umm.... There is really no excuse for that, is there? ^^

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Aiiee! At last another person in the world who thinks Thief is slashy. I knew it wasn't just me. Garret is so doing it with that Keeper.

And the underwear. Aziraphale's pants are the underpants of doooom. In a nice white cottony sort of way. I'm so glad it helped you traumatise people. *g*

[canthlian.livejournal.com]

Yersh. Garrett is a total slut. Karras, Keepers, Viktoria, you name it, he's done it. (Which brings to mind some interesting images involving the zombies, but I won't go there)

The Underpants of Traumatisation; here for an unlimited time only!