DVD-style commentary - One For the Road
First of all, many many thanks to whoever nominated my fics at lost_fic_awards, and for those who voted for Love Can Be a Liar at lostfichallenge. It's an honor. And my flist rocks. I'm surrounded by so many great writers! *group hug*
And now, bowlerhat_girl requested commentary on One For the Road. Here you go! Commentary is in bold, as usual.
It turns out they really do listen to Patsy Cline everywhere. Even in Miami.
I might have downloaded Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits while writing this. It's a thing. Also, this first line is obviously a reference to Tabula Rasa, when Ray Mullen asks Kate if they listen to Patsy Cline in Canada. I liked Ray a lot, despite the whole betrayal-of-Kate-to-Ed-Mars thing he did.
You choose Miami for the beaches. And the irony of that decision is not lost on you, but the truth is that now, it's difficult to sleep without the sound of waves crashing outside your window.
There seem to be two schools of thought in the fandom regarding the ocean post-rescue - That it'd be avoided, as if it'd be a sort of PTSD trigger thing, or that they'd gravitate to it, that it's so familiar now that they can't be without it. Both are entirely plausible; I tend towards the latter. And I do think it would be hard to sleep in silence or city-noise after months of sleeping to the waves.
You can sink in Miami, like you could sink with your mother, before she chose him. Like you could sink there, the place that still holds you, even though you're gone.
That Kate. Daddy issues and Mommy issues. (And pregnancy issues! She's got it all, the Lost Trifecta.)
You also choose Miami for its distance from Los Angeles and a drunken Jack who won't stop calling, and for its distance from Iowa and a charred piece of land you used to call home. You choose it for the relative possibility of anonymity here (though you remember a ticket to Tallahassee and who was behind you in line, and that distance isn't far at all).
Okay, this is where this whole commentary thing gets embarrassing. Because here I have to admit that, while writing this fic, I actually forgot that Kate used to live in Miami. That Kevin Callis would probably still live there. *headdesk* It's bothered me for so long about this fic, but I can't go back and rewrite the details, because that feels too much like cheating. I think the anonymity thing still works - Miami's a big enough city that she could stay away from familiar places and people - but it still really, really bugs me.
For the record, *I* chose Miami for this fic because of the Juliet connection. That's all.
You're drawn to this particular Miami bar when the door swings open and you hear Patsy Cline's voice filter out into the street. And now you're perched on a barstool, remembering another time, another life, playing a record in a jungle hatch,
That bit of a scene in What Kate Did, where she grins to herself as she starts the Walking After Midnight record? Slays me every time. I love it.
defending yourself against a man you're trying not to love, kissing another. Running away. Some things don't change.
"You run. I con. Tiger don't change their stripes." lenina20 knows I can't resist turning everything into a Kate/Sawyer fic. Guilty as charged.
The bartender slides your drink across the bar and you hear a voice that makes you stiffen immediately.
“Put hers on my tab.”
You turn, and she's standing there as if she's the exact person you should have been expecting to see here tonight. There's the same perfect blond hair, the same steel blue eyes, the same eternally calm demeanor, that half smile curling her lip just slightly.
My own first impression of Juliet (when we knew she was Juliet and not random-woman-hosting-book-club). Her little half-smile and how she's always so damned calm when she's being manipulative and evil. It's really...irritating. Maybe I was projecting too much, but I'm pretty sure Kate was feeling even more strongly at this point.
“Don't bother,” you snarl to the bartender, and he widens his eyes a little, opens his palms as if to say, you two fight this one out.
Hm. Bartender might've really enjoyed what's coming next, eh?
Well. That can be arranged. You grip the glass and down your drink so fast you almost cough, but manage to stand up and toss a twenty on the bar in one fluid motion. You jerk your head towards the door and push your way through the other bar patrons, not bothering to look back to see if she's following.
A twenty for one drink? Hate to see the tab she'd have run up had she stayed...Though it's not like here she's going to stand around and wait for change.
She is. Of course.
Outside, you turn to face her again. She doesn't look surprised at all at your reaction to her presence, and you take a long breath in through your nose, willing your body to relax, to match her poise.
The competition between the two starts here (or really, probably started with the paying for the drink thing). It's always been there between these two - who can out-manipulate the other, who can be more badass, who can be more uncaring about their fate, who can seduce Jack more effectively...I've always felt Kate feels a little out of her element around Juliet, beyond the obvious thread she is, as an Other, at the beginning. In their previous lives, Juliet would have been the type of woman Kate always wished she could be, after all.
“Hello, Kate.” And she smiles.
Juliet always does that, the matter of fact greeting with the smile you know isn't real. She did it to Jack all the time in the Hydra. It always used to make me feel sorry for Jack, and not much does that.
“Juliet.” You return her smile with one that reeks of insincerity. “It's been a while.” And when she nods, calmly, you forget about relaxing, you forget about poise, and instead you grab her arm and pull her with you into the alley behind the bar.
“He thinks you're still there.”
She has the audacity to raise an eyebrow in a questioning manner. “Jack?”
Before current canon shot it out of the water, this was my personal pet theory as to what caused Island!Jack to turn into Nirvana!Jack. The whole reason (or most of it) for his "We have to go baaaaack!" in TTLG. My secret inner Jacket coming out, or something. That, or it just made sense to me. It still does, despite current canon.
Of course Jack. But you neither confirm nor deny, not in so many words. “He wants to go back. For you.” You spit the last word as if it's offensive.
I imagine, were Juliet actually the reason for Jack's depressive spiral, Kate would have felt this weird jealousy about it all. Resentment because she wouldn't believe Juliet was a good reason to need to go back.
“He thinks you're still there. Everyone does.”
She threw the "everyone" in almost as an afterthought, I think. To cover up her own feelings about Jack, how pissed she is at Juliet *for* him. Even though I'm sure Juliet sees right through that.
And she smiles, shaking her head as if reacting to an unfortunately slow child. “I've been here, Kate.”
For an instant, you remember the way she'd screamed with a dislocated shoulder, and you grab that arm again. Your eyes burn in warning, and now she actually has the grace to flinch slightly as you push her back against the brick wall, face inches from hers. You think of how you'd twisted that arm, think of how it'd cracked back into place, but you stop short of doing so again, instead keeping her pinned, both wrists in your hands.
Oh, that scene in Left Behind. The source of so much Kate/Juliet femmeslash and suggestive icons. I'd certainly never thought of Kate/Juliet before then.
“Do you remember when you told me I'd broken his heart?” But you're not actually thinking of that at all; instead, your mind is on the slurred, rambling voice of the once-composed doctor, who calls you in the middle of the night, begging, pleading, insisting you have to go back.
It's always bugged me that Juliet whined to Kate about breaking Jack's heart. As if Kate was responsible for how Jack responded to her and Sawyer having Not-So-Super-Secret Hot Jungle Cage Sex. As if at the moment she and Sawyer were finally giving in and making sweet, sweet love, Kate should have said something along the lines of, "Wait, Sawyer, we may be dead tomorrow and I really do just want to jump your bones and spend the last few hours of our lives in blissful euphoria, but we shouldn't. Jack's feelings might get hurt when he sees us on Ben's Pornvision. Stop kissing me, stop undressing me. Stop making me forget about our impending death. Stop showing me how much you really love me. After all, JACK'S FEELINGS MIGHT GET HURT." Uh huh. Yeah right. Um, am I rambling too much, giving too much away of my own admittedly biased feelings about the triangle quadrangle? Oops.
Your words and their implication actually seem to have some sort of effect on the blond woman, and she stops struggling against you for a moment. You're both breathing heavily, tense emotion between you, hot breath on each other's faces.
This kind of reads really cliche. The whole angry tension close faces hot breath thing. Oh well. My first foray into femmeslash; is that an okay excuse?
And then her lips are on yours, bruising and demanding, and before you can recover from the surprise you're pushing your tongue into her mouth, demanding right back.
Juliet makes the first move. You know, rereading this after a long time? I'd forgotten I had her make the first move. I like it. I think in her mind, it was just a control thing. Like Kate slapping her in Left Behind, but much more forceful and, well, unconventional.
It starts with anger and you're not sure if it ever moves from there. It's an argument of the fiercest kind, give and take, push and pull, both of you needing to overpower the other.
Pretty much just an exposition on most all of Kate and Juliet's interactions that have spanned the series. There's a reason I used that line for the summary.
Tomorrow you'll have a bruise from where she bites down on your shoulder. She'll have finger-shaped marks on her upper arms. She pushes your shirt up while you hook a leg around her waist, and when you push your hand beneath her waistband and press your fingers against her warm wetness, she lets out a groan that only causes you to press harder.
elliotsmelliot and I have had several conversations about how difficult it is to write graphic intimacy scenes. I much prefer to deal with the emotions behind the actions, not because I'm a prude, but because whenever I attempt to write truly graphic sex, it comes off sounding very mechanical. That, and I tend to dislike most all of the colloquialisms for sexual body parts. "Warm wetness" here is a prime example. Don't know what I would have used instead, but I'm not too fond of it.
She's a paradox, all hard angles and soft curves, and you've never had anyone like her. You take her bottom lip in your teeth, but you have to drop it when your mouth opens, involuntarily, as you feel her fingers pressing into you. You raise on your toes and you open your eyes in time to see a triumphant look on her face.
This is my favorite paragraph of the story, the first sentence in particular. No reason in particular, except that I think it really got the intent of the story out well. Ha. I also enjoy that Juliet thinks she's won here. Right, like Kate's going to let that go.
The bitch.
You set your jaw and slip one finger into her, then another. You hear her involuntary intake of breath and twist your fingers, curling them inside of her. She follows suit, and it's a battle now, again, insistent and painful. You search out her center, squeezing and twisting until you feel her muscles tense, contracting and releasing around your fingers. And you come just after, hard and fast, trembling with spent passion and anger.
This is what I mean about preferring the emotions to the graphic actions. This is obviously a sex scene and you know what they're doing, but it's graphic only if you squint really hard. It's more about these two people battling for control, which was the entire point of the fic anyway. Sex just happens to be the way they're going about it this time.
Oh yeah, and Kate wins. Just barely, but she wins. ;)
You pull away from where your face is buried in her neck, pull your hands away from her and right your clothing. She's doing the same and you hold her gaze just long enough for her to turn away.
Winning never feels as great as you think it will. But Kate's determined to keep the advantage, even by making Juliet look at her and then turn away first.
You watch as she walks out of the alley then follow, though you turn the opposite direction when you reach the street. The bus station is a short walk from here.
You chose Miami, but you won't be staying.
Miami again. I like parallelism. I think I tend to do that a lot, reference the beginning of a fic in its ending. Never really thought about that consciously until now...
Some things never change.
And again with the vague reference to Kate/Sawyer and "Tiger don't change their stripes." I truly cannot help myself. *g*
ETA: Oh, yeah. I meant to comment on the whole writing in second person thing. Other people tend to comment to me about it, after all. I've never really understood why it's supposed to be so much more difficult to write in second person (this not to sound smug or anything) - sometimes it almost feels like cheating to me. This fic, for example - I started writing it in third person, as I usually write. But in this story, with all the back and forth and push and pull between Juliet and Kate, in all honesty? I was getting muddled up with all the shes and hers. It gets old to keep writing their proper names all the time, and there's only so many ways you can say "the other woman," "the blond woman," "the brunette," without sounding stupid and getting bored. I'm serious. That's why this is in second person. That's it. But I do like how it turned out (so much so that my next femmeslash fic I wrote - Kate and Sun - I also wrote in second person, that more deliberately).
And now, bowlerhat_girl requested commentary on One For the Road. Here you go! Commentary is in bold, as usual.
It turns out they really do listen to Patsy Cline everywhere. Even in Miami.
I might have downloaded Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits while writing this. It's a thing. Also, this first line is obviously a reference to Tabula Rasa, when Ray Mullen asks Kate if they listen to Patsy Cline in Canada. I liked Ray a lot, despite the whole betrayal-of-Kate-to-Ed-Mars thing he did.
You choose Miami for the beaches. And the irony of that decision is not lost on you, but the truth is that now, it's difficult to sleep without the sound of waves crashing outside your window.
There seem to be two schools of thought in the fandom regarding the ocean post-rescue - That it'd be avoided, as if it'd be a sort of PTSD trigger thing, or that they'd gravitate to it, that it's so familiar now that they can't be without it. Both are entirely plausible; I tend towards the latter. And I do think it would be hard to sleep in silence or city-noise after months of sleeping to the waves.
You can sink in Miami, like you could sink with your mother, before she chose him. Like you could sink there, the place that still holds you, even though you're gone.
That Kate. Daddy issues and Mommy issues. (And pregnancy issues! She's got it all, the Lost Trifecta.)
You also choose Miami for its distance from Los Angeles and a drunken Jack who won't stop calling, and for its distance from Iowa and a charred piece of land you used to call home. You choose it for the relative possibility of anonymity here (though you remember a ticket to Tallahassee and who was behind you in line, and that distance isn't far at all).
Okay, this is where this whole commentary thing gets embarrassing. Because here I have to admit that, while writing this fic, I actually forgot that Kate used to live in Miami. That Kevin Callis would probably still live there. *headdesk* It's bothered me for so long about this fic, but I can't go back and rewrite the details, because that feels too much like cheating. I think the anonymity thing still works - Miami's a big enough city that she could stay away from familiar places and people - but it still really, really bugs me.
For the record, *I* chose Miami for this fic because of the Juliet connection. That's all.
You're drawn to this particular Miami bar when the door swings open and you hear Patsy Cline's voice filter out into the street. And now you're perched on a barstool, remembering another time, another life, playing a record in a jungle hatch,
That bit of a scene in What Kate Did, where she grins to herself as she starts the Walking After Midnight record? Slays me every time. I love it.
defending yourself against a man you're trying not to love, kissing another. Running away. Some things don't change.
"You run. I con. Tiger don't change their stripes." lenina20 knows I can't resist turning everything into a Kate/Sawyer fic. Guilty as charged.
The bartender slides your drink across the bar and you hear a voice that makes you stiffen immediately.
“Put hers on my tab.”
You turn, and she's standing there as if she's the exact person you should have been expecting to see here tonight. There's the same perfect blond hair, the same steel blue eyes, the same eternally calm demeanor, that half smile curling her lip just slightly.
My own first impression of Juliet (when we knew she was Juliet and not random-woman-hosting-book-club). Her little half-smile and how she's always so damned calm when she's being manipulative and evil. It's really...irritating. Maybe I was projecting too much, but I'm pretty sure Kate was feeling even more strongly at this point.
“Don't bother,” you snarl to the bartender, and he widens his eyes a little, opens his palms as if to say, you two fight this one out.
Hm. Bartender might've really enjoyed what's coming next, eh?
Well. That can be arranged. You grip the glass and down your drink so fast you almost cough, but manage to stand up and toss a twenty on the bar in one fluid motion. You jerk your head towards the door and push your way through the other bar patrons, not bothering to look back to see if she's following.
A twenty for one drink? Hate to see the tab she'd have run up had she stayed...Though it's not like here she's going to stand around and wait for change.
She is. Of course.
Outside, you turn to face her again. She doesn't look surprised at all at your reaction to her presence, and you take a long breath in through your nose, willing your body to relax, to match her poise.
The competition between the two starts here (or really, probably started with the paying for the drink thing). It's always been there between these two - who can out-manipulate the other, who can be more badass, who can be more uncaring about their fate, who can seduce Jack more effectively...I've always felt Kate feels a little out of her element around Juliet, beyond the obvious thread she is, as an Other, at the beginning. In their previous lives, Juliet would have been the type of woman Kate always wished she could be, after all.
“Hello, Kate.” And she smiles.
Juliet always does that, the matter of fact greeting with the smile you know isn't real. She did it to Jack all the time in the Hydra. It always used to make me feel sorry for Jack, and not much does that.
“Juliet.” You return her smile with one that reeks of insincerity. “It's been a while.” And when she nods, calmly, you forget about relaxing, you forget about poise, and instead you grab her arm and pull her with you into the alley behind the bar.
“He thinks you're still there.”
She has the audacity to raise an eyebrow in a questioning manner. “Jack?”
Before current canon shot it out of the water, this was my personal pet theory as to what caused Island!Jack to turn into Nirvana!Jack. The whole reason (or most of it) for his "We have to go baaaaack!" in TTLG. My secret inner Jacket coming out, or something. That, or it just made sense to me. It still does, despite current canon.
Of course Jack. But you neither confirm nor deny, not in so many words. “He wants to go back. For you.” You spit the last word as if it's offensive.
I imagine, were Juliet actually the reason for Jack's depressive spiral, Kate would have felt this weird jealousy about it all. Resentment because she wouldn't believe Juliet was a good reason to need to go back.
“He thinks you're still there. Everyone does.”
She threw the "everyone" in almost as an afterthought, I think. To cover up her own feelings about Jack, how pissed she is at Juliet *for* him. Even though I'm sure Juliet sees right through that.
And she smiles, shaking her head as if reacting to an unfortunately slow child. “I've been here, Kate.”
For an instant, you remember the way she'd screamed with a dislocated shoulder, and you grab that arm again. Your eyes burn in warning, and now she actually has the grace to flinch slightly as you push her back against the brick wall, face inches from hers. You think of how you'd twisted that arm, think of how it'd cracked back into place, but you stop short of doing so again, instead keeping her pinned, both wrists in your hands.
Oh, that scene in Left Behind. The source of so much Kate/Juliet femmeslash and suggestive icons. I'd certainly never thought of Kate/Juliet before then.
“Do you remember when you told me I'd broken his heart?” But you're not actually thinking of that at all; instead, your mind is on the slurred, rambling voice of the once-composed doctor, who calls you in the middle of the night, begging, pleading, insisting you have to go back.
It's always bugged me that Juliet whined to Kate about breaking Jack's heart. As if Kate was responsible for how Jack responded to her and Sawyer having Not-So-Super-Secret Hot Jungle Cage Sex. As if at the moment she and Sawyer were finally giving in and making sweet, sweet love, Kate should have said something along the lines of, "Wait, Sawyer, we may be dead tomorrow and I really do just want to jump your bones and spend the last few hours of our lives in blissful euphoria, but we shouldn't. Jack's feelings might get hurt when he sees us on Ben's Pornvision. Stop kissing me, stop undressing me. Stop making me forget about our impending death. Stop showing me how much you really love me. After all, JACK'S FEELINGS MIGHT GET HURT." Uh huh. Yeah right. Um, am I rambling too much, giving too much away of my own admittedly biased feelings about the triangle quadrangle? Oops.
Your words and their implication actually seem to have some sort of effect on the blond woman, and she stops struggling against you for a moment. You're both breathing heavily, tense emotion between you, hot breath on each other's faces.
This kind of reads really cliche. The whole angry tension close faces hot breath thing. Oh well. My first foray into femmeslash; is that an okay excuse?
And then her lips are on yours, bruising and demanding, and before you can recover from the surprise you're pushing your tongue into her mouth, demanding right back.
Juliet makes the first move. You know, rereading this after a long time? I'd forgotten I had her make the first move. I like it. I think in her mind, it was just a control thing. Like Kate slapping her in Left Behind, but much more forceful and, well, unconventional.
It starts with anger and you're not sure if it ever moves from there. It's an argument of the fiercest kind, give and take, push and pull, both of you needing to overpower the other.
Pretty much just an exposition on most all of Kate and Juliet's interactions that have spanned the series. There's a reason I used that line for the summary.
Tomorrow you'll have a bruise from where she bites down on your shoulder. She'll have finger-shaped marks on her upper arms. She pushes your shirt up while you hook a leg around her waist, and when you push your hand beneath her waistband and press your fingers against her warm wetness, she lets out a groan that only causes you to press harder.
elliotsmelliot and I have had several conversations about how difficult it is to write graphic intimacy scenes. I much prefer to deal with the emotions behind the actions, not because I'm a prude, but because whenever I attempt to write truly graphic sex, it comes off sounding very mechanical. That, and I tend to dislike most all of the colloquialisms for sexual body parts. "Warm wetness" here is a prime example. Don't know what I would have used instead, but I'm not too fond of it.
She's a paradox, all hard angles and soft curves, and you've never had anyone like her. You take her bottom lip in your teeth, but you have to drop it when your mouth opens, involuntarily, as you feel her fingers pressing into you. You raise on your toes and you open your eyes in time to see a triumphant look on her face.
This is my favorite paragraph of the story, the first sentence in particular. No reason in particular, except that I think it really got the intent of the story out well. Ha. I also enjoy that Juliet thinks she's won here. Right, like Kate's going to let that go.
The bitch.
You set your jaw and slip one finger into her, then another. You hear her involuntary intake of breath and twist your fingers, curling them inside of her. She follows suit, and it's a battle now, again, insistent and painful. You search out her center, squeezing and twisting until you feel her muscles tense, contracting and releasing around your fingers. And you come just after, hard and fast, trembling with spent passion and anger.
This is what I mean about preferring the emotions to the graphic actions. This is obviously a sex scene and you know what they're doing, but it's graphic only if you squint really hard. It's more about these two people battling for control, which was the entire point of the fic anyway. Sex just happens to be the way they're going about it this time.
Oh yeah, and Kate wins. Just barely, but she wins. ;)
You pull away from where your face is buried in her neck, pull your hands away from her and right your clothing. She's doing the same and you hold her gaze just long enough for her to turn away.
Winning never feels as great as you think it will. But Kate's determined to keep the advantage, even by making Juliet look at her and then turn away first.
You watch as she walks out of the alley then follow, though you turn the opposite direction when you reach the street. The bus station is a short walk from here.
You chose Miami, but you won't be staying.
Miami again. I like parallelism. I think I tend to do that a lot, reference the beginning of a fic in its ending. Never really thought about that consciously until now...
Some things never change.
And again with the vague reference to Kate/Sawyer and "Tiger don't change their stripes." I truly cannot help myself. *g*
ETA: Oh, yeah. I meant to comment on the whole writing in second person thing. Other people tend to comment to me about it, after all. I've never really understood why it's supposed to be so much more difficult to write in second person (this not to sound smug or anything) - sometimes it almost feels like cheating to me. This fic, for example - I started writing it in third person, as I usually write. But in this story, with all the back and forth and push and pull between Juliet and Kate, in all honesty? I was getting muddled up with all the shes and hers. It gets old to keep writing their proper names all the time, and there's only so many ways you can say "the other woman," "the blond woman," "the brunette," without sounding stupid and getting bored. I'm serious. That's why this is in second person. That's it. But I do like how it turned out (so much so that my next femmeslash fic I wrote - Kate and Sun - I also wrote in second person, that more deliberately).