my very last bigbang babble, i promise
i've started thinking about next year's bigbang, because i am just that kind of jumping-the-gun, but there's still a lot of random shit i never talked about from this year's bigbang, and i need to put it somewhere, for myself if no one else. so here it is.
the opening scenes were originally set in december 1931, not 1932, but after i got into the boys' actual bank robbing ventures i realized a. john dillinger did not have that long a career and neither did bonnie and clyde, b. it meant i had a LOT of time to cover, and c. there was no fucking way i could do justice to two full years of robbing banks, plus five months on the far end, because d. i just didn't have enough time to write it. wrenlet in her infinite wisdom suggested i just push the timeline forward a year and start in december 1932, so i did. there was not much rewriting, but there was much relief. *phew*
beth the little blonde girl in front of the post office is this verse's equivalent of parker from leverage at about eight years old. in my head she looks like how i imagine beth riesgraf might have looked at that age, and wearing overalls. this is the reason her name is (and always was) beth, even tho the actual - er, au version of the actual - beth riesgraf shows up at steve carlson's nye party. (little blonde beth was an early-days snippet and i toyed with the idea of making her a younger au version of the real beth, which is how she got to be the only oc with a name.)
chris' bare-knuckle boxing background is a tribute to eliot on leverage, and in retrospect, considering how often eliot gets to be put-upon and cranky this season, chris' terminal crankiness towards chad is probably partly tribute too.
poor chad - i warned for him because of some discussion and joking at either the second or third wincon. warn for chad, heh. i tried not to make him a douchebag, tho. i wanted him to be a little ridiculous and a little reckless and a little, er, thoughtless, but not a bad guy.
after i decided i really wanted kirsten vangsness and matthew gray gubler in there, i realized it was weird to write kirsten without shemar moore, but i hung myself up on the fact that i had no idea what the state of black/white relations was in early-30s indiana. i didn't think there were a whole lot of strong non-fraught friendships between black men and white women - professional or otherwise - and i was enough of a stickler for historical detail that it meant i ended up scratching the itch for more cm actors by randomly name-checking paget brewster instead. matthew and kirsten are driving home from her wedding. :D
and then aldis hodge makes an appearance at steve's nye party, and i don't think kentucky was any more racially integrated than indiana was - altho i have no idea how or where he and steve and chris met - so clearly my need for historical accuracy only goes so far. but, you know, ALDIS. i really really wanted him to be there somewhere.
kirsten mentions matthew dislocating his knee at a supper club as a way to integrate the fact that he really did practically destroy his knee by falling on an empty dance floor at some bar in la last summer. fictional matthew did not however do nearly the same kind of damage that actual matthew did, just because knee surgery is a lot more advanced now and if he did in 1932 what he did in 2009 he'd probably have permanently half-crippled himself.
(matthew is not kirsten's type because au!kirsten, like real!kirsten, is in a committed relationship with another woman.)
rodney the scottie dog from abilene is an in-joke that only makes sense if a. you've seen flight of the phoenix, b. you ship rodney/john, and c. you know that tony curran's from glasgow. i make no apologies for my fandorkery. :D
i added the idea for the scene where jensen breaks out of jail and they all escape in the sheriff's car after i saw public enemies, altho every single detail about that scene (including who exactly had gotten thrown in jail in the first place) changed several times between when i decided i wanted to add it and when i finally fit it into the story. the only thing that didn't change was samantha ferris as the sheriff. (lili taylor played lillian holley - the actual sheriff of crown point, and the woman whose car dillinger stole when he escaped from the jail - in the movie.)
likewise, bonnie and clyde gave me the idea for matthew and kirsten's kidnapping. also there's a scene in the movie that takes place in a recently-abandoned and foreclosed-on farmhouse, which i also tried to lift for my story. it was going to be an empty but still half-furnished house in killeen, tx, also a foreclosed property, and the only vaguely slashy scene i ever had in mind was going to take place in one of the bedrooms. (all it ever was was some desperate kissage, tho. even my discarded plans were mostly pg-13.) at one point the boys were going to bog down there because i was going to give chris food poisoning, and then i wrote the scene in abilene - incuding jared running them off the road and wrecking the car - and realized no, they're not going to stay in texas if they can possibly help it, and if that means chris puking in the back seat of the car or out a window, so be it. but i didn't give him food poisoning. i sent the boys to kentucky instead. :D
i wrote the intro before i wrote most of the story, so i already knew i had to get them to steve's place somehow. (just like i knew krista manns was going to be instrumental in their one jailbreak.) i'm not sure why i wanted him to be in kentucky, i just knew he couldn't be in texas.
one of the things jensen remembers from his very first robbery - the teller's freaked-out expression - was inspired by something in bonnie and clyde - this mostly makes sense if i mention that bit was originally from jared's pov and he was originally going to jump the counter to get to the tellers. (there's a scene in the movie where buck barrow, played by gene hackman, jumps on the counter in front of the teller cages, and the tellers make O.O faces.) i came thisclose to using a variation on the line "we're not here for your money, we're here for the bank's", which is apocryphally attributed to john dillinger but there's a suggestion that clyde barrow said it too, during a robbery that took place after he would've read dillinger's words in the paper. but i thought that was a little TOO close to reality, and appropriating historical events was enough without appropriating historical dialogue as well.
(the story goes that a farmer was either depositing or withdrawing (i can't remember which) from a bank when dillinger and co broke in to rob it, and the guy attempted to hand his money over to them, no doubt thinking it would keep him from getting shot. and dillinger said no, that's yours, you keep it. it wasn't that much. both bonnie and clyde and public enemies have a version of this scene.)
apparently genevieve was originally going to be jim's fbi secretary, which i only know because i found the cast list that i wrote, and under "san antonio" it says "miss cortese mccoy (sec'y)". i made her danneel's roommate instead because i liked the idea of sandy as the fbi secretary better, and there was something oddly parallel about making danneel and genevieve roommates, and then giving genevieve a crush on jared. danneel was always going to be jensen's ex, tho, and she was always going to be in the story somewhere.
likewise robert downey jr and jeffrey dean morgan, altho in the early days jdm was going to be a sheriff or something. when i wrote his bit he only had one dog, and i just never bothered to rewrite the scene to include bandit too. you'll also note jared's dogs only rate a nameless mention.
i don't actually know if criminals without their own representation were routinely assigned public defenders by the court in the early 30s, or if that kind of thing started happening later, but i figured it was a safe bet that they did. i don't even know why i made sean patrick flanery jensen's lawyer, other than i have an image in my head of him in a rumpled overcoat, and evidently that screams "small-town missouri public defender". i don't even know.
when jensen shows up at the house where danneel's house-sitting, she's wearing yellow pants and a white short-sleeve shirt and has a scarf tied over her hair. i have a very clear snapshot of that scene, jensen standing at the kitchen door in his wrinkled, bloodstained jacket and his best puppy-dog face and danneel in her clean springy clothes. random things you'll never know from reading the fic. :D
(the other thing you won't know, altho you might if you catch the one almost throwaway mention, is that chris has eliot!hair, ie long(ish). he's got short hair in all of nuka_winch's graphics, tho, which is probably more historically accurate, and since he's still really cute, i'm SO not complaining.)
the story ends where it does partly because it's the story of the jay gang, and when the gang breaks up, that's the end of the story. also when i wrote it i had no idea what happened to any of the boys and i couldn't write past the point where they disband. chad possibly going to georgia, driving for bootleggers, and racing stock cars is a nod to neal thompson's book driving with the devil: southern moonshine, detroit wheels, and the birth of nascar, in which you learn that nascar was born from all these southern bootleggers and their souped-up whiskey fords in the mid/late 30s. i have an idea for a bootlegger story half-formed in my head, and if i'd still been reading driving with the devil when i decided i wanted to write a bigbang, that's the historical au i would've used. (and i did in fact have a brief period of utter frustration with my story and wanted to scrap the whole thing and start over with the boys as moonshiners in, like, 1936. that lasted about a day.)
driving with the devil is, like bryan burrough's public enemies, a fascinating read, and i highly recommend it.
since i posted the fic i've given it some thought, and i think jared and jensen hauled ass across texas and fetched up in arizona or new mexico, somewhere closer to the mountains where they wouldn't fry during the summer, and they bought some land and built a house and, i dunno, started raising horses or something. chad went to kansas city in an attempt to re-woo julie, but it'd been a year and she really wasn't interested, and he finally got the hint and left. chris took a train out to kentucky to stay with steve, and since i like the idea of him running a gym, i'm leaning towards the rumor of him being in colorado in 1937 as actual truth. (i have no idea why i picked that state and that year. must've had a reason, can't remember it.) none of them get caught for their robberies. i like to think they lived long, weird lives, stayed in touch, eventually died happy and fulfilled and not dead broke.
i owe the general structure of the fic, namely the time and place stamps at the beginning of each chapter, to bryan burrough, who starts each chapter of his book with the time period it covers, and each section inside the chapter starts with the relevant place and dates.
i owe a lot of the fic to bryan burrough. it's because of his book that my story is historically accurate at all.
and now i'm done. :D
the opening scenes were originally set in december 1931, not 1932, but after i got into the boys' actual bank robbing ventures i realized a. john dillinger did not have that long a career and neither did bonnie and clyde, b. it meant i had a LOT of time to cover, and c. there was no fucking way i could do justice to two full years of robbing banks, plus five months on the far end, because d. i just didn't have enough time to write it. wrenlet in her infinite wisdom suggested i just push the timeline forward a year and start in december 1932, so i did. there was not much rewriting, but there was much relief. *phew*
beth the little blonde girl in front of the post office is this verse's equivalent of parker from leverage at about eight years old. in my head she looks like how i imagine beth riesgraf might have looked at that age, and wearing overalls. this is the reason her name is (and always was) beth, even tho the actual - er, au version of the actual - beth riesgraf shows up at steve carlson's nye party. (little blonde beth was an early-days snippet and i toyed with the idea of making her a younger au version of the real beth, which is how she got to be the only oc with a name.)
chris' bare-knuckle boxing background is a tribute to eliot on leverage, and in retrospect, considering how often eliot gets to be put-upon and cranky this season, chris' terminal crankiness towards chad is probably partly tribute too.
poor chad - i warned for him because of some discussion and joking at either the second or third wincon. warn for chad, heh. i tried not to make him a douchebag, tho. i wanted him to be a little ridiculous and a little reckless and a little, er, thoughtless, but not a bad guy.
after i decided i really wanted kirsten vangsness and matthew gray gubler in there, i realized it was weird to write kirsten without shemar moore, but i hung myself up on the fact that i had no idea what the state of black/white relations was in early-30s indiana. i didn't think there were a whole lot of strong non-fraught friendships between black men and white women - professional or otherwise - and i was enough of a stickler for historical detail that it meant i ended up scratching the itch for more cm actors by randomly name-checking paget brewster instead. matthew and kirsten are driving home from her wedding. :D
and then aldis hodge makes an appearance at steve's nye party, and i don't think kentucky was any more racially integrated than indiana was - altho i have no idea how or where he and steve and chris met - so clearly my need for historical accuracy only goes so far. but, you know, ALDIS. i really really wanted him to be there somewhere.
kirsten mentions matthew dislocating his knee at a supper club as a way to integrate the fact that he really did practically destroy his knee by falling on an empty dance floor at some bar in la last summer. fictional matthew did not however do nearly the same kind of damage that actual matthew did, just because knee surgery is a lot more advanced now and if he did in 1932 what he did in 2009 he'd probably have permanently half-crippled himself.
(matthew is not kirsten's type because au!kirsten, like real!kirsten, is in a committed relationship with another woman.)
rodney the scottie dog from abilene is an in-joke that only makes sense if a. you've seen flight of the phoenix, b. you ship rodney/john, and c. you know that tony curran's from glasgow. i make no apologies for my fandorkery. :D
i added the idea for the scene where jensen breaks out of jail and they all escape in the sheriff's car after i saw public enemies, altho every single detail about that scene (including who exactly had gotten thrown in jail in the first place) changed several times between when i decided i wanted to add it and when i finally fit it into the story. the only thing that didn't change was samantha ferris as the sheriff. (lili taylor played lillian holley - the actual sheriff of crown point, and the woman whose car dillinger stole when he escaped from the jail - in the movie.)
likewise, bonnie and clyde gave me the idea for matthew and kirsten's kidnapping. also there's a scene in the movie that takes place in a recently-abandoned and foreclosed-on farmhouse, which i also tried to lift for my story. it was going to be an empty but still half-furnished house in killeen, tx, also a foreclosed property, and the only vaguely slashy scene i ever had in mind was going to take place in one of the bedrooms. (all it ever was was some desperate kissage, tho. even my discarded plans were mostly pg-13.) at one point the boys were going to bog down there because i was going to give chris food poisoning, and then i wrote the scene in abilene - incuding jared running them off the road and wrecking the car - and realized no, they're not going to stay in texas if they can possibly help it, and if that means chris puking in the back seat of the car or out a window, so be it. but i didn't give him food poisoning. i sent the boys to kentucky instead. :D
i wrote the intro before i wrote most of the story, so i already knew i had to get them to steve's place somehow. (just like i knew krista manns was going to be instrumental in their one jailbreak.) i'm not sure why i wanted him to be in kentucky, i just knew he couldn't be in texas.
one of the things jensen remembers from his very first robbery - the teller's freaked-out expression - was inspired by something in bonnie and clyde - this mostly makes sense if i mention that bit was originally from jared's pov and he was originally going to jump the counter to get to the tellers. (there's a scene in the movie where buck barrow, played by gene hackman, jumps on the counter in front of the teller cages, and the tellers make O.O faces.) i came thisclose to using a variation on the line "we're not here for your money, we're here for the bank's", which is apocryphally attributed to john dillinger but there's a suggestion that clyde barrow said it too, during a robbery that took place after he would've read dillinger's words in the paper. but i thought that was a little TOO close to reality, and appropriating historical events was enough without appropriating historical dialogue as well.
(the story goes that a farmer was either depositing or withdrawing (i can't remember which) from a bank when dillinger and co broke in to rob it, and the guy attempted to hand his money over to them, no doubt thinking it would keep him from getting shot. and dillinger said no, that's yours, you keep it. it wasn't that much. both bonnie and clyde and public enemies have a version of this scene.)
apparently genevieve was originally going to be jim's fbi secretary, which i only know because i found the cast list that i wrote, and under "san antonio" it says "miss cortese mccoy (sec'y)". i made her danneel's roommate instead because i liked the idea of sandy as the fbi secretary better, and there was something oddly parallel about making danneel and genevieve roommates, and then giving genevieve a crush on jared. danneel was always going to be jensen's ex, tho, and she was always going to be in the story somewhere.
likewise robert downey jr and jeffrey dean morgan, altho in the early days jdm was going to be a sheriff or something. when i wrote his bit he only had one dog, and i just never bothered to rewrite the scene to include bandit too. you'll also note jared's dogs only rate a nameless mention.
i don't actually know if criminals without their own representation were routinely assigned public defenders by the court in the early 30s, or if that kind of thing started happening later, but i figured it was a safe bet that they did. i don't even know why i made sean patrick flanery jensen's lawyer, other than i have an image in my head of him in a rumpled overcoat, and evidently that screams "small-town missouri public defender". i don't even know.
when jensen shows up at the house where danneel's house-sitting, she's wearing yellow pants and a white short-sleeve shirt and has a scarf tied over her hair. i have a very clear snapshot of that scene, jensen standing at the kitchen door in his wrinkled, bloodstained jacket and his best puppy-dog face and danneel in her clean springy clothes. random things you'll never know from reading the fic. :D
(the other thing you won't know, altho you might if you catch the one almost throwaway mention, is that chris has eliot!hair, ie long(ish). he's got short hair in all of nuka_winch's graphics, tho, which is probably more historically accurate, and since he's still really cute, i'm SO not complaining.)
the story ends where it does partly because it's the story of the jay gang, and when the gang breaks up, that's the end of the story. also when i wrote it i had no idea what happened to any of the boys and i couldn't write past the point where they disband. chad possibly going to georgia, driving for bootleggers, and racing stock cars is a nod to neal thompson's book driving with the devil: southern moonshine, detroit wheels, and the birth of nascar, in which you learn that nascar was born from all these southern bootleggers and their souped-up whiskey fords in the mid/late 30s. i have an idea for a bootlegger story half-formed in my head, and if i'd still been reading driving with the devil when i decided i wanted to write a bigbang, that's the historical au i would've used. (and i did in fact have a brief period of utter frustration with my story and wanted to scrap the whole thing and start over with the boys as moonshiners in, like, 1936. that lasted about a day.)
driving with the devil is, like bryan burrough's public enemies, a fascinating read, and i highly recommend it.
since i posted the fic i've given it some thought, and i think jared and jensen hauled ass across texas and fetched up in arizona or new mexico, somewhere closer to the mountains where they wouldn't fry during the summer, and they bought some land and built a house and, i dunno, started raising horses or something. chad went to kansas city in an attempt to re-woo julie, but it'd been a year and she really wasn't interested, and he finally got the hint and left. chris took a train out to kentucky to stay with steve, and since i like the idea of him running a gym, i'm leaning towards the rumor of him being in colorado in 1937 as actual truth. (i have no idea why i picked that state and that year. must've had a reason, can't remember it.) none of them get caught for their robberies. i like to think they lived long, weird lives, stayed in touch, eventually died happy and fulfilled and not dead broke.
i owe the general structure of the fic, namely the time and place stamps at the beginning of each chapter, to bryan burrough, who starts each chapter of his book with the time period it covers, and each section inside the chapter starts with the relevant place and dates.
i owe a lot of the fic to bryan burrough. it's because of his book that my story is historically accurate at all.
and now i'm done. :D