i love it when a man dies
17 October 2022 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steppenwolfHello! Welcome! Make yourself comfortable! Don't die of scurvy before finishing this (sorry this got really long)!
I'm so excited you're here. <3 Thank you for writing for me and for (probably) being one of the people who turned polar explorer rpf into the biggest rpf fandom in TOWN. and if you're just here to rubberneck, may I offer a shackleham in these trying times.
okay let's get cracking, as belgrave ninnis famously did not say for his last words.
in general
This be my first Yuletide, but you can check out my writing & the kind of thing I go for at threelions. I am fairly easy to please - slaps hood of car this baby can fit so many men dying in it - and so while the below are just my frenzied thoughts, please don't feel the need to stick too closely to them! I'm happy to read anything you feed me, all the more so if it's something you loved writing.
likes
> death. how do explain this... sassoon wrote that "the dead... are more real than the living, because they are complete". i'm obsessed with, like, how the act of death opens them to be interpreted (and reinterpreted, and misinterpreted), how they are more real because everything about them is there and frozen in time (ha), how we bring our own habits to the dead. i like.. people realising they're about to die and how differently they react - scott, for example, writing himself into history, shackleton's funeral boat party. i like, unfortunately, noble failure, not in the sense of glorifying it, but in the sense of what these guys believed it stood for, and how it's the only way to tell yourself it meant something (cries in wc2018). one of my favourite pieces of media Ever is the ending of blackadder if that tells you anything. i like dark and deep thoughts about death!! sue me!!
> character studies. tangential to ^ because i feel like death forms an integral part of a character, but always love getting to the heart of what makes someone them, and even how this comes through in their relationships with others. also, please do as you will! not to say that i have a specific interpretation of people - i mean, of course i do, but i think the best character studies are written with your own interpretations of them rather than trying to fit someone else's.
> plot plot plot! i'm weak for well-constructed narratives, non-linear ones, metafiction, deconstructed traditional takes (e.g. five things BUT), subtle worldbuilding and exploration*, things that make me go pikachu face. this is more aspirational than anything else, but if you feel the need the need for speed, go for it.
*on worldbuilding: i will say i like this stuff through slow reveals rather than a more textbooky/introductory style.
> conversely i really like quiet fics as well, like - i think you can tell a lot about a character in how they just exist. this includes sebaldian style things that don't seem to have a lot of plot but actually make you think about the world.
> AUs: the thing I love most about AUs is how canonical things get translated into them. See Terrebus, for example. So how do these different lenses throw light onto existing characters & relationships & worldviews? How is polar exploration really just football really just war really just space really just love? AUs I adore, in this similar vein, are: football, time travel/loops, apocalypse, ghosts!!!!!, came back wrong, scifi - including pacrim and blade runner - and space, world war one, magical realism, soul and telepathic bonds (not neccessarily fixed), noir, spoopy stuff.
> tropes: always a sucker for tropes. found families, friends to lovers - enemies to lovers - enemies and lovers, loyalty and ride and dies, pining (but not in a sappy way?? more like a darcy handflex way, iykwim), hurt/comfort, one bed, loving banter, only I can make fun of him, the oh moment, w h u m p. looots of things to get my goat!
DNWs
> pwp: i don't mind porn, but i don't like it as being the main focus of a fic. the sexy part to me is the dying part.
> kinks: similarly, not a kink person. i started to list them out but realise i'm just blah about most kinks.
> AUs: kidfic, wingfic, genderswap, A/B/O, high school/university, coffee shop, werewolves/vampires, regency, marvel-esque superheroes, angels and demons, marriage/fake dating.
> some plot devices: including multiple POVs, love triangles (hell polycule an exception), deus ex machina, exposition, flashbacks. these aren't hard and fast; i just think they can be done badly and prefer to avoid them.
> misc: issuefic, rape, covid-19, unrequested gender/sexuality hcs, cheating as a major storyline, woobification
the boys
as a general note you don't have to use all of the characters in any request!
> polar explorer rpf - robert falcon scott, ernest shackleton, edward wilson
Hell! Polycule! I'm truly obsessed with any and all permutations of these guys, and simply nothing you do here could go wrong! I love how fundamentally different they all are and how those differences play either into their relationships or cause the breaking down of them. How con gets bill as an emotional counterweight slash life partner, how bill gets shackles as an early fun times collaborator before that's uh Bad Breakup, how shackles gets con as - waves hand. whatever that mess is. And of course how things are brought to bear with all three of them during the sledging journey & what changes afterwards!! they're just such deeply complex characters (including bill! who's easy to woobify/pedestalise and yet is endlessly fascinating!) and i would like to see unhinged thoughts about them.
>> Discovery!! Admittedly I can't be too specific here because I haven't started on my required reading but I'd love any and everything set on this expedition. I bang on about this all the time but it's just wild to me what they were doing - because we know better now, and we can criticise them, and it's easy to say why didn't you get to the pole when you know it has already been done - and I'd love to see that uncertainty and yes foolish bravery play out amongst their uncertain and foolish relationships.
>> I'm currently particularly in love with the con/shackles brand of what I can only sum up as: con thinks it's honourable to die, shackles thinks it's honourable to keep fighting, but they both would get themselves into that position in the first place. I feel like they don't like each other because the rules they're following are different, and I'd love to see how this plays out in different contexts - football a favourite, but lately I've been thinking about WWI and how con might have actually been more sure of himself than shackles for once in that context. (this supposes he survives 1912 lmao.)
>> ghosts! ghosts! ghosts! I think it's fair to say ghosts are my favourite AU and that's because of the haunting, babey, the memories, the stuff that's bared because you've nowhere to hide. give me long conversations at mcmurdo! give me billcon haunting shackles during endurance or the other way round if shackles had died on sledging! give me museum ghosts PLEASE
>> consider throwing a lil frankie wild in there. I find it endlessly amusing they both tried to poach each other's right hand, especially when that right hand drinks loyalty for a living. What if Bilson and Wild had been, like, ay let's try it out and swapped them, or better yet, gone off by themselves.
>> lighthouse au taking no questions
> shackleton (2002) - frank worsley, frank wild, frank hurley
From one polycule to another! I've left shackles out here although of course he's an integral part, but I'd like to consider the Franks for a moment. We know wuzzles and wild fell out after shackles died, which leads me to think what would have happened if shackles hadn't been there? They are, again, all very different and I'd love to see their interactions with each other / about shackles without him actually being present, if that makes sense. The best I can explain it is the wild/wuzzles in this beautiful fic, where you can see who they are and how they're feeling despite shackles not being around. Essentially: oops all franks! I do love and picture the miniseries Hurley all the time when thinking about him, hence their being under the tv series here, but feel free to go with historical Hurley as well!
>> I guess the above bit was more a prompt than an intro huh! but if you're here I expect you probably know them better than I do already so :*
>> Hurley woulda been the last of the Franks to know bc he wasn't on Quest - how did that play out? Who told him? Did they contact each other after?? All of the Franks live for a bit after (which is always weird to me, a Terra Nova girl) - how do their memories and relationships change? What do they make of each other's lives? Do they still keep in contact? Have they fallen miserably and irrevocably apart? I can always easily be hurt by Frankie Wild's life post exploration, and would read a thousand words about him alone, the best number two having to navigate a world without a number one :'3c (consider actually this brand of explorer for whom the unsettling-ness of exploration was actually the most settled of all!)
>> I cry and die every time at wuzzles voiceovers of hurley's film. It's just so bloody cute I want details! Did Hurley ask him to do it? How did they record it? Were there Notes. Was Frankie Wild involved. I also desperately want, like, Anzac rivalries! the banter! untapped mines. give it us!
>> Although canon stuff has my heart for these boys, I think organisational AUs would also be interesting (so say football or pacrim), because they all handle vastly different things. Wild is v good at admin, Wuzzles is v good at ops, Hurley is v good at making things look good. How's that work out between them in another life? (Also. How is it working out for the frank-trio post shackledeath at his testimonial game?)
> the worst journey in the world - apsley cherry-garrard
ohhhhhh cherry cherry cherry. I just want to put him in my pocket and pat him occasionally on the head. You know him as the greatest travel writer of all time, I know him as the greatest writer of a book that visibly dissociates when all of his friends die. Good fucking christ. At the risk of sounding completely heartless - you know the way I mean this, ok, the same way I mean 'WWI is my favourite war' - I'm constantly thinking about his experience, the reverse-hero's journey that he expected and got, the awful half-life he was left with, the guilt of not knowing if he could've done something, which is imo worse than knowing. Chewwy :((
>> I feel like you could really go in any direction with this. Fundamentally I think Cherry's story is primetime for the exploration of big concepts like Grief and Trauma and Loneliness, and I'd love to see your take on this stuff if you'd be so inclined! AUs like time travel, came back wrong, or ghosts would be particularly pertinent here.
>> Mythmaking!! Con's legend is so persistent because of his own writing and because of Cherry's writing. Writing is what keeps the expedition alive in our heads, the way that achievements keep Roald's and endurance keeps Shackles'. I don't know what you could turn this into, fic-wise, but I think there's so much to explore about how stories are told and remembered, how people can write themselves into the narrative. (I know this is under Cherry, because I do think he contributed immensely, but I'd also be down for a focus on Con under polar rpf - how 'who lives who dies who tells your story' (sorry) is all applicable to him.)
>> Outsider pov?? Always thinking of that letter from Lashly to Cherry being like are you ok you don't say. Barks I just want the best for him!!!
>> There's a bit from Spiritfarer (beautiful game, thought: Cherry as Stella) that really resonated with me re this boy: "Even on the battlefield he would still be taking pictures. Can you believe that? Despite all the violence and carnage, he still found beauty." Worst Journey is still a beautiful book. All to say that, and this is more a vibe than a prompt, but consider giving him a melancholy/ambiguous/somewhat hopeful ending in whatever you do.. like not a straight up unhappy one... he's been thru a lot... bleathe
> terra nova by ted tally - any
I cannot understate how much this lives in my brain rent-free. Like I will be in normal conversation and some line will strike me and I'll be like haha just like [x] in terra nova by ted tally and people will be wot are you on about m8. This happens bc the play is so essentially My Id that I don't think I can ever distance myself entirely now that I've read it lmao. The cacophony of time travel and the way it builds up / culminates at the end! Avatar of death Roald which is really just Con's imagination of him! The unforgiving world of post-WWI they will all eventually be judged by! Con's introspection, just the perfect man to be tortured by himself! how do you like your game now, english? where will you find the rules? / in myself. AAAAA
>> I'm down for anyone here because imo the world - and the myriad of ways it can be understood / taken in - is what's so fascinating. It could be incredibly meta - time loops like a froot here, and who's to say the play itself isn't looping; it could be reversed - what's actual Roald getting up to? is dead Con haunting his every step to the pole?; how might staging being incorporated to the play change the play? how would reading certain lines differently (lookin at oates)?; what do the others see and think - does kathleen see the polar party? does the polar party see roald? are they being haunted by their own ghosts?; where is antarctica in all of this - is the real avatar of death/haunting the setting?; what is up with 'owo we're at the pole and we're practically married now' roald buddy is this flirting? do you think you're flirting? There are SO MANY things that you can explore here and I would enjoy literally anything you do with this!
>> This is, in effect, already an AU, but what I think might be interesting is if the players were, er, the ghosts. Or if the ghosts were watching the play. Because the play includes slides of the actual photographs. So what if the haunting is there? Fun thoughts on a Monday morning!
>> If there's one part I wasn't as satisfied by (some bonkers characterisation aside) it was the ending; don't get me wrong, Con's last words move me deeply every time, but I think they stand on themselves and Terra Nova didn't need to lean on them in their entirety to end well. Something more haunting, for example, might be less surety in the writing of, or the stripping out of different words to form some kind of blackout poetry. Or an entirely different scene - ending, for example, with knocking on the door of his house, Kathleen waiting inside! I dunno. I like my endings more than any other part of a story and I think something really special could be done here!
I also have two fairly unprompty/gen requests that are more to cater to my exploroscope and favourite boys:
> birthday boys - lawrence oates
Birthday Boys is full of... interesting character choices - not all bad, and with some beautiful lines. I think for the most part I enjoyed her portrayal of Oates, and how (at least, as best as I can remember) she gets that he's bitchy but not bad. There was this line that I loved about him thinking that scott had. somehow, retained his essential humanity despite the rigours of the military, and that he himself hadn't. Hadn't he? Or why did he think that? I don't know! He's just such an interesting gremlin of a man. Didn't want to be there. Didn't want to say anything. I feel him in my bones. I would just like to read more about him.
>> This is the most unprompty request, because I simply think there should be more of him around. However I will push the scoates agenda. hell yea people who don't like each other not bc they are bad people but bc they have different priorities and characters. (goth titus emo con i always say.) gigi buffon voice i cry often and alone when thinking of that one time they got drunk and a little affectionate. Have you ever rotated in your mind the fact that titus's entire legend is due to con's one line about him? Also I find it v funny to think about them being the only two ghosts of the polar party to be tied down. I will also push dancoates, and as a bonus, the ghost files boys investigating mcmurdo :o
> madhouse at the end of the earth - georges lecointe
My favouritest boy!!!! I loved and latched onto him so immediately and so hard that it did not click until later the 'there are downs' sabs warned me about was the uh, cat crimes. And then I felt physically upset when people I loved were saying they didn't like him and could not forgive cat crimes. Happily I think he eventually won them over (as he does everyone, hehehehehheheheh) or at least is in the process of doing so, so I am Pleased!
He just ticks so many of my boxes: scrappy & fighty, high strung, Smol, good at his job, unthinkingly loyal, 'captain', cares about people ferociously even if it might not appear so at first glance (ALWAYS SOBBING AT HE SLIPPED FROM MY HANDS). Also the most entertaining writer!! Uses exclamation marks like i use semicolons!!
>> Again, I have nothing particular in mind, I just love him v much and want more of him. I will love any scraps you throw at me, but particularly raco/lecointe, because they play off of each other so deliciously well - expansive, fun raco and would break an arm to win P.E. basketball lecointe - and lecointe/danco, because I'm a sucker for old friends especially old friends that sit at the other's deathbed and hold him hand.
>> Writing these last two ones made me think about oates = scholesy and lecointe = gaz, and I'm just leaving this here for consideration.
I hope you get a sense of what I like from this letter. I do. I DO. But really, thank you for reading this and for writing for me, and I cannot wait to see what you come up with.
♡♡♡
I'm so excited you're here. <3 Thank you for writing for me and for (probably) being one of the people who turned polar explorer rpf into the biggest rpf fandom in TOWN. and if you're just here to rubberneck, may I offer a shackleham in these trying times.
okay let's get cracking, as belgrave ninnis famously did not say for his last words.
in general
This be my first Yuletide, but you can check out my writing & the kind of thing I go for at threelions. I am fairly easy to please - slaps hood of car this baby can fit so many men dying in it - and so while the below are just my frenzied thoughts, please don't feel the need to stick too closely to them! I'm happy to read anything you feed me, all the more so if it's something you loved writing.
likes
> death. how do explain this... sassoon wrote that "the dead... are more real than the living, because they are complete". i'm obsessed with, like, how the act of death opens them to be interpreted (and reinterpreted, and misinterpreted), how they are more real because everything about them is there and frozen in time (ha), how we bring our own habits to the dead. i like.. people realising they're about to die and how differently they react - scott, for example, writing himself into history, shackleton's funeral boat party. i like, unfortunately, noble failure, not in the sense of glorifying it, but in the sense of what these guys believed it stood for, and how it's the only way to tell yourself it meant something (cries in wc2018). one of my favourite pieces of media Ever is the ending of blackadder if that tells you anything. i like dark and deep thoughts about death!! sue me!!
> character studies. tangential to ^ because i feel like death forms an integral part of a character, but always love getting to the heart of what makes someone them, and even how this comes through in their relationships with others. also, please do as you will! not to say that i have a specific interpretation of people - i mean, of course i do, but i think the best character studies are written with your own interpretations of them rather than trying to fit someone else's.
> plot plot plot! i'm weak for well-constructed narratives, non-linear ones, metafiction, deconstructed traditional takes (e.g. five things BUT), subtle worldbuilding and exploration*, things that make me go pikachu face. this is more aspirational than anything else, but if you feel the need the need for speed, go for it.
*on worldbuilding: i will say i like this stuff through slow reveals rather than a more textbooky/introductory style.
> conversely i really like quiet fics as well, like - i think you can tell a lot about a character in how they just exist. this includes sebaldian style things that don't seem to have a lot of plot but actually make you think about the world.
> AUs: the thing I love most about AUs is how canonical things get translated into them. See Terrebus, for example. So how do these different lenses throw light onto existing characters & relationships & worldviews? How is polar exploration really just football really just war really just space really just love? AUs I adore, in this similar vein, are: football, time travel/loops, apocalypse, ghosts!!!!!, came back wrong, scifi - including pacrim and blade runner - and space, world war one, magical realism, soul and telepathic bonds (not neccessarily fixed), noir, spoopy stuff.
> tropes: always a sucker for tropes. found families, friends to lovers - enemies to lovers - enemies and lovers, loyalty and ride and dies, pining (but not in a sappy way?? more like a darcy handflex way, iykwim), hurt/comfort, one bed, loving banter, only I can make fun of him, the oh moment, w h u m p. looots of things to get my goat!
DNWs
> pwp: i don't mind porn, but i don't like it as being the main focus of a fic. the sexy part to me is the dying part.
> kinks: similarly, not a kink person. i started to list them out but realise i'm just blah about most kinks.
> AUs: kidfic, wingfic, genderswap, A/B/O, high school/university, coffee shop, werewolves/vampires, regency, marvel-esque superheroes, angels and demons, marriage/fake dating.
> some plot devices: including multiple POVs, love triangles (hell polycule an exception), deus ex machina, exposition, flashbacks. these aren't hard and fast; i just think they can be done badly and prefer to avoid them.
> misc: issuefic, rape, covid-19, unrequested gender/sexuality hcs, cheating as a major storyline, woobification
the boys
as a general note you don't have to use all of the characters in any request!
> polar explorer rpf - robert falcon scott, ernest shackleton, edward wilson
Hell! Polycule! I'm truly obsessed with any and all permutations of these guys, and simply nothing you do here could go wrong! I love how fundamentally different they all are and how those differences play either into their relationships or cause the breaking down of them. How con gets bill as an emotional counterweight slash life partner, how bill gets shackles as an early fun times collaborator before that's uh Bad Breakup, how shackles gets con as - waves hand. whatever that mess is. And of course how things are brought to bear with all three of them during the sledging journey & what changes afterwards!! they're just such deeply complex characters (including bill! who's easy to woobify/pedestalise and yet is endlessly fascinating!) and i would like to see unhinged thoughts about them.
>> Discovery!! Admittedly I can't be too specific here because I haven't started on my required reading but I'd love any and everything set on this expedition. I bang on about this all the time but it's just wild to me what they were doing - because we know better now, and we can criticise them, and it's easy to say why didn't you get to the pole when you know it has already been done - and I'd love to see that uncertainty and yes foolish bravery play out amongst their uncertain and foolish relationships.
>> I'm currently particularly in love with the con/shackles brand of what I can only sum up as: con thinks it's honourable to die, shackles thinks it's honourable to keep fighting, but they both would get themselves into that position in the first place. I feel like they don't like each other because the rules they're following are different, and I'd love to see how this plays out in different contexts - football a favourite, but lately I've been thinking about WWI and how con might have actually been more sure of himself than shackles for once in that context. (this supposes he survives 1912 lmao.)
>> ghosts! ghosts! ghosts! I think it's fair to say ghosts are my favourite AU and that's because of the haunting, babey, the memories, the stuff that's bared because you've nowhere to hide. give me long conversations at mcmurdo! give me billcon haunting shackles during endurance or the other way round if shackles had died on sledging! give me museum ghosts PLEASE
>> consider throwing a lil frankie wild in there. I find it endlessly amusing they both tried to poach each other's right hand, especially when that right hand drinks loyalty for a living. What if Bilson and Wild had been, like, ay let's try it out and swapped them, or better yet, gone off by themselves.
>> lighthouse au taking no questions
> shackleton (2002) - frank worsley, frank wild, frank hurley
From one polycule to another! I've left shackles out here although of course he's an integral part, but I'd like to consider the Franks for a moment. We know wuzzles and wild fell out after shackles died, which leads me to think what would have happened if shackles hadn't been there? They are, again, all very different and I'd love to see their interactions with each other / about shackles without him actually being present, if that makes sense. The best I can explain it is the wild/wuzzles in this beautiful fic, where you can see who they are and how they're feeling despite shackles not being around. Essentially: oops all franks! I do love and picture the miniseries Hurley all the time when thinking about him, hence their being under the tv series here, but feel free to go with historical Hurley as well!
>> I guess the above bit was more a prompt than an intro huh! but if you're here I expect you probably know them better than I do already so :*
>> Hurley woulda been the last of the Franks to know bc he wasn't on Quest - how did that play out? Who told him? Did they contact each other after?? All of the Franks live for a bit after (which is always weird to me, a Terra Nova girl) - how do their memories and relationships change? What do they make of each other's lives? Do they still keep in contact? Have they fallen miserably and irrevocably apart? I can always easily be hurt by Frankie Wild's life post exploration, and would read a thousand words about him alone, the best number two having to navigate a world without a number one :'3c (consider actually this brand of explorer for whom the unsettling-ness of exploration was actually the most settled of all!)
>> I cry and die every time at wuzzles voiceovers of hurley's film. It's just so bloody cute I want details! Did Hurley ask him to do it? How did they record it? Were there Notes. Was Frankie Wild involved. I also desperately want, like, Anzac rivalries! the banter! untapped mines. give it us!
>> Although canon stuff has my heart for these boys, I think organisational AUs would also be interesting (so say football or pacrim), because they all handle vastly different things. Wild is v good at admin, Wuzzles is v good at ops, Hurley is v good at making things look good. How's that work out between them in another life? (Also. How is it working out for the frank-trio post shackledeath at his testimonial game?)
> the worst journey in the world - apsley cherry-garrard
ohhhhhh cherry cherry cherry. I just want to put him in my pocket and pat him occasionally on the head. You know him as the greatest travel writer of all time, I know him as the greatest writer of a book that visibly dissociates when all of his friends die. Good fucking christ. At the risk of sounding completely heartless - you know the way I mean this, ok, the same way I mean 'WWI is my favourite war' - I'm constantly thinking about his experience, the reverse-hero's journey that he expected and got, the awful half-life he was left with, the guilt of not knowing if he could've done something, which is imo worse than knowing. Chewwy :((
>> I feel like you could really go in any direction with this. Fundamentally I think Cherry's story is primetime for the exploration of big concepts like Grief and Trauma and Loneliness, and I'd love to see your take on this stuff if you'd be so inclined! AUs like time travel, came back wrong, or ghosts would be particularly pertinent here.
>> Mythmaking!! Con's legend is so persistent because of his own writing and because of Cherry's writing. Writing is what keeps the expedition alive in our heads, the way that achievements keep Roald's and endurance keeps Shackles'. I don't know what you could turn this into, fic-wise, but I think there's so much to explore about how stories are told and remembered, how people can write themselves into the narrative. (I know this is under Cherry, because I do think he contributed immensely, but I'd also be down for a focus on Con under polar rpf - how 'who lives who dies who tells your story' (sorry) is all applicable to him.)
>> Outsider pov?? Always thinking of that letter from Lashly to Cherry being like are you ok you don't say. Barks I just want the best for him!!!
>> There's a bit from Spiritfarer (beautiful game, thought: Cherry as Stella) that really resonated with me re this boy: "Even on the battlefield he would still be taking pictures. Can you believe that? Despite all the violence and carnage, he still found beauty." Worst Journey is still a beautiful book. All to say that, and this is more a vibe than a prompt, but consider giving him a melancholy/ambiguous/somewhat hopeful ending in whatever you do.. like not a straight up unhappy one... he's been thru a lot... bleathe
> terra nova by ted tally - any
I cannot understate how much this lives in my brain rent-free. Like I will be in normal conversation and some line will strike me and I'll be like haha just like [x] in terra nova by ted tally and people will be wot are you on about m8. This happens bc the play is so essentially My Id that I don't think I can ever distance myself entirely now that I've read it lmao. The cacophony of time travel and the way it builds up / culminates at the end! Avatar of death Roald which is really just Con's imagination of him! The unforgiving world of post-WWI they will all eventually be judged by! Con's introspection, just the perfect man to be tortured by himself! how do you like your game now, english? where will you find the rules? / in myself. AAAAA
>> I'm down for anyone here because imo the world - and the myriad of ways it can be understood / taken in - is what's so fascinating. It could be incredibly meta - time loops like a froot here, and who's to say the play itself isn't looping; it could be reversed - what's actual Roald getting up to? is dead Con haunting his every step to the pole?; how might staging being incorporated to the play change the play? how would reading certain lines differently (lookin at oates)?; what do the others see and think - does kathleen see the polar party? does the polar party see roald? are they being haunted by their own ghosts?; where is antarctica in all of this - is the real avatar of death/haunting the setting?; what is up with 'owo we're at the pole and we're practically married now' roald buddy is this flirting? do you think you're flirting? There are SO MANY things that you can explore here and I would enjoy literally anything you do with this!
>> This is, in effect, already an AU, but what I think might be interesting is if the players were, er, the ghosts. Or if the ghosts were watching the play. Because the play includes slides of the actual photographs. So what if the haunting is there? Fun thoughts on a Monday morning!
>> If there's one part I wasn't as satisfied by (some bonkers characterisation aside) it was the ending; don't get me wrong, Con's last words move me deeply every time, but I think they stand on themselves and Terra Nova didn't need to lean on them in their entirety to end well. Something more haunting, for example, might be less surety in the writing of, or the stripping out of different words to form some kind of blackout poetry. Or an entirely different scene - ending, for example, with knocking on the door of his house, Kathleen waiting inside! I dunno. I like my endings more than any other part of a story and I think something really special could be done here!
I also have two fairly unprompty/gen requests that are more to cater to my exploroscope and favourite boys:
> birthday boys - lawrence oates
Birthday Boys is full of... interesting character choices - not all bad, and with some beautiful lines. I think for the most part I enjoyed her portrayal of Oates, and how (at least, as best as I can remember) she gets that he's bitchy but not bad. There was this line that I loved about him thinking that scott had. somehow, retained his essential humanity despite the rigours of the military, and that he himself hadn't. Hadn't he? Or why did he think that? I don't know! He's just such an interesting gremlin of a man. Didn't want to be there. Didn't want to say anything. I feel him in my bones. I would just like to read more about him.
>> This is the most unprompty request, because I simply think there should be more of him around. However I will push the scoates agenda. hell yea people who don't like each other not bc they are bad people but bc they have different priorities and characters. (goth titus emo con i always say.) gigi buffon voice i cry often and alone when thinking of that one time they got drunk and a little affectionate. Have you ever rotated in your mind the fact that titus's entire legend is due to con's one line about him? Also I find it v funny to think about them being the only two ghosts of the polar party to be tied down. I will also push dancoates, and as a bonus, the ghost files boys investigating mcmurdo :o
> madhouse at the end of the earth - georges lecointe
My favouritest boy!!!! I loved and latched onto him so immediately and so hard that it did not click until later the 'there are downs' sabs warned me about was the uh, cat crimes. And then I felt physically upset when people I loved were saying they didn't like him and could not forgive cat crimes. Happily I think he eventually won them over (as he does everyone, hehehehehheheheh) or at least is in the process of doing so, so I am Pleased!
He just ticks so many of my boxes: scrappy & fighty, high strung, Smol, good at his job, unthinkingly loyal, 'captain', cares about people ferociously even if it might not appear so at first glance (ALWAYS SOBBING AT HE SLIPPED FROM MY HANDS). Also the most entertaining writer!! Uses exclamation marks like i use semicolons!!
>> Again, I have nothing particular in mind, I just love him v much and want more of him. I will love any scraps you throw at me, but particularly raco/lecointe, because they play off of each other so deliciously well - expansive, fun raco and would break an arm to win P.E. basketball lecointe - and lecointe/danco, because I'm a sucker for old friends especially old friends that sit at the other's deathbed and hold him hand.
>> Writing these last two ones made me think about oates = scholesy and lecointe = gaz, and I'm just leaving this here for consideration.
I hope you get a sense of what I like from this letter. I do. I DO. But really, thank you for reading this and for writing for me, and I cannot wait to see what you come up with.
♡♡♡
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Date: 17/10/2022 03:03 am (UTC)nobody write this or i'll try you at the hague what the FUCK RACH
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Date: 17/10/2022 07:54 am (UTC)