One for Sorrow

I won Yuletide this year with my gift fic. A story of an asset and his handler through the years. I think this is the very first fic for The Americans to feature Charles Duluth and it is SO. GOOD!

Like the Fellow Says (7425 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Americans (TV 2013)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Philip Jennings & Charles Duluth
Characters: Philip Jennings, Charles Duluth, Elizabeth Jennings
Additional Tags: Unresolved Emotional Tension, Backstory, Character Study, Non-Linear Narrative
Summary:

He knew damn well that without these meetings with Philip, handing over information, trading sarcasm, his life now would be meaningless. He'd known that for a while. But what he hadn't known before was what Philip got out of it. Asset and handler: Charles and Philip through the years.

Can't believe how long it's been since I updated. I've been distracted by a lot of non-fandom things still going on, and spending a lot of time babbling about Mad Men on TWOP—no, not bashing Megan or JP’s teeth! There were times I was overdosing on her a bit and I don't think JP is that strong of an actress, especially relative to the rest of the cast, but in general, had a lot of fun analyzing Megan the character in many words! I may do a post on my thoughts about Megan--and one more on Pete because as annoying as it is for Megan-fans to read her bashing man I hate reviews that dismiss Pete's story with "I hate Pete and don't care what happens to him so his story made no sense and was dumb."

I've also been watching The Legend of Korra. I didn't have the same obsessed reaction to Korra as I didn’t to ATLA. Having seen the finale now, I just had to get thoughts out on how the storyline fell flat for me. So fair warning for criticism within--if you love the show I don't want to harsh your squee at all so please don't click! ( Korra spoilers within. )

So yeah, it just seemed like an odd series to me.

I was kind of blown away by Mad Men last night. It was a night of Pete Campbell at his worst, and yet it made me realize that he's probably my favorite character. I've always perked up whenever he was in a scene and last night he just made my heart hurt. Going to bed I was like...how can you be so taken with such a nasty, sad little character nobody likes for good reason? Because he's so damn unhappy and inadequate and is cursed to try too hard and get exactly the opposite results because he just can't relax or be himself if he even knows who that self is and he's...

OMG, he's Draco Malfoy.

( Oh no. I've found another one. )

I'm not signed up with this topic or anything, but it's meta so I'm cross-posting it here hoping it might be of interest. I've been thinking about Breaking Bad and the way it handles disability. There's probably discussions of this somewhere that I just haven't seen, I've read so many things about how Glee handles its disabled characters (in the usual Glee way, which means it's a mess), but the character of Walter Jr. is never brought up. I've kept spoilers vague and to a minimum, and I'm hoping it might make sense even if you don't watch the show. ( So here are my many thoughts on this subject... )

Glee is one of the weirdest shows on TV, I swear. On one hand I can’t follow it like a real show because it’s so inconsistent, but otoh it’s fascinating watching what stuff they throw at the wall every week to see if it sticks, seeing what strange ways people will behave this week and how it contradicts the strange ways they behaved three weeks earlier. Sometimes an episode will seem even weirder than usual. ( I thought last night’s show was one of those. )

I don't know if anybody else even watches the show The Big C, but it's on after Weeds, so I do. It's not a big favorite, but last night I was a little weirded out by something in an ep, and it makes me wonder how I was supposed to have reacted to it.

The show stars Laura Linney as a woman who has terminal cancer. Last night’s ep involved a high school reunion. Spoilers for the ep within, but you probably ( don't need to know the show to follow the post... )

I've been loving True Blood so far this season. It's doing what it does best, being a ridiculous show that I still find myself looking forward to as if it's awesome. I saw an interesting comment on this week's show that made me think about what seems to link back to the ongoing discussion of fandom about storytelling vs. being responsible. I'll put it under a cut for spoilers for the lastest ep, "If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin?" The comment involves the folks in Hot Shot and potentially offensive portrayals thereof...( More inside. )

I'm reading the reactions to the SPN finale and having total flashbacks to HP. Usually I don't think of those canons being very similar, but they both have characters with strong personalities that color all their reactions. They can get hurt by someone saying something not intended to hurt them, or do something that's hurtful to someone else without thinking it's hurtful. They can do obviously the wrong thing while thinking it's totally the right thing.

It makes the interactions fun to analyze to tease out how the characters are talking past each other or influencing each other in ways they can't understand, and makes every character an island where they can't ever truly understand the other person. I mean, they can understand them based on familiarity with their behavior, but if you asked them to analyze the other person it would probably bear no resemblance to how that character saw themselves.

But this leads to a fandom with a lot of different factions who see one character as right or sympathetic and other characters as wrong. And along with that go assumptions that if you disagree with someone on which character deserves understanding it must be because you're a stan of that character and so completely biased, rather than just seeing a grey area a little differently than the other person. The show serves up a sad, tragic situation that mixes love and resentment or has characters having a bad influence on each other without meaning to, it is guaranteed to cause fury!

Not generalizing the whole fandom with that there. There's plenty of people not doing that and writing about it, I've seen it. I'm just totally not surprised that after that finale there's a lot of fury going on, with different groups complaining that their character was dissed and hated on by the writers and will continue to be so while other characters unfairly elevated. The messiest fictional situations inspire the loudest insistance that it's all very clean and simple.

Today I had one of those thoughts that's kind of stating the obvious so there's little need to write it down, but it was in response to many people implying it wasn't true so I'm writing it down. It has to do with female characters. ( Or rather, the perfect female character. )