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rachelleneveuI should just change the title of this journal to "All Memes, All The Time." It'd be quicker. :P
Give me a pairing and I'll answer the following. If it so moves you, give me a few pairs.
1.) What they most commonly do during sex (if they are the sexing type)
2.) Who has prettier (or just more attractive) hair
3.) What they argue about most often
4.) Who'd cope best if the other one died
5.) The happiest plausible happily-ever-after I can think of for them
6.) The most tragic possible ending for them
7.) What I enjoy most about their dynamic
8.) What I find difficult to write about them
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 12:06 am (UTC)Critic/Chick
Date: 2011-09-16 03:45 pm (UTC)2.) Chick. She does take care of the outside stuff, even if she doesn’t put as much effort into taking care of the rest of her body.
3.) Outside of the business things? Critic can’t stand the levels her drinking goes to whenever Chick falls into one of her periods of self-loathing. Chick looks down on him for sticking by ATG, even after everything he’s done to Critic.
4.) They’d both struggle with it, but overall I think Critic would be the one who handles it better. He’s used to people leaving, by force or by choice; it hurts, but it’s become a sad fact of life by now that everyone he loves eventually leaves him and really, he’s been so beaten down by this point that he believes there’s nothing he can do to change it. If it were reversed, I think Chick would put on a good front, but it would eat away at her like everything does and she’d eventually self-destruct.
5.) Chick’s the one who finally gets the strength to leave, and she picks New York as the place where she’s going to try and start over. Critic comes with her at the absolute last minute; they argue about her leaving and he tells her no, he can’t go without his brother, and she is literally pulling away from the curb in front of his building when he runs up out of nowhere and pounds on the window, making her stop and unlock the doors so he can toss a bag in the backseat. There’s no sunset to drive off into and they snipe at each other the entire time, but when they get to the “Leaving Chicago” sign Critic’s hand finds hers across the gearshift. Chick lets him keep it there for ten minutes, then insults his taste in music and makes him change the station on the radio.
6.) That Other Girl works her way down her list, saving Chick and Critic for last. She ties Chick up and makes her watch while she tears him down, really digging in the fact that what she’s been “forced to do” to the other people in the club is both their faults – that <>i>everything is their fault. Critic dies believing it. Chick holds out to the end.
7.) I love that how out of everyone, their relationship here is still kind of the same as the one they have outside this AU. They’re still snarky and bratty and bossy as all hell, but there’s a darker edge to the affection they have for each other and that’s probably my favorite thing about these two.
8.) Sometimes I feel like I don’t get them the way you or Freya or Nombre do. You all seem to really understand these characters and know what makes them tick, and sometimes I think that when I write them, I’m not getting it right.
Ask That Guy/Bennet the Sage
Date: 2011-09-16 03:50 pm (UTC)2.) Sage. He does have lovely hair.
3.) They don’t argue: any problems ATG has with Sage or the company, he keeps to himself, and with good reason.
4.) Sage. Oh, he’d be sad, but people are just playthings to him and he’d find another toy soon enough. Really, he’d be more upset about having to break in a whole new person than over Ask That Guy’s actual death.
5.) Sage moves on to bigger and better things, letting ATG take over the old company. Critic gets to finally live the dream of becoming his twin’s “trophy wife” and Chick “goes missing” not too long after ATG gets complete control. The video they make with her sells thousands of copies – it’s their best one yet, actually – and Ask That Guy and Sage toast each other from comfortable chairs in Sage’s new office.
6.) Sage moves on to bigger and better things. Ask That Guy never comes home from their last meeting.
7.) Sage being completely in his element is very interesting to see, and watching him out-creepify ATG is always, always fun. ;)
8.) Making it believable. There are limits even to Sage’s power/creepifying abilities and ATG's level of insanity, and while it would be easy to keep these two in character while going completely over the top in their regular incarnations, if I want to keep them realistic in this universe, I have tone them both down a lot.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 12:21 am (UTC)Mary/Joe
Date: 2011-09-16 03:10 pm (UTC)1.) They’re a pretty vanilla couple when it comes to sex; probably the kinkiest thing they get up to is the occasional quickie in one of the back rooms. Joe comes from the school of thought that believes the girl always comes first (and more than once, if possible) and Mary likes that she can set the pace, but mostly likes how after long nights of being treated like a piece of meat, Joe makes her feel like a person again.
2.) Mary, but that doesn’t mean she always likes it. It’s too long and people sometimes tease her about the color, and once in a while she thinks about cutting it short like Lucy or dyeing it black like Chick. In the end, though, she leaves it alone and deals with it.
3.) Joe’s overprotectiveness at the bar, definitely, but he and Lucy sometimes do stupid things when they go out – picking a fight with stranger is probably the most common result of their “quiet night up at Heroes” – and Mary is always afraid that if he keeps this kind of behavior up he’s going to get arrested, or worse, seriously hurt.
4.) I’m just going to quote you, here, because your answer sums everything up perfectly: “Joe, I think. He's old enough and, in this verse, scarred enough that he could handle. He wouldn't like it, and he'd probably spend a couple of months drinking himself near to death, but I think if Joe died, Mary would legitimately break.”
5.) Mary’s always careful with her clients and Joe wraps up religiously, but they slip a couple times and when Mary finds out she’s pregnant, it’s the last straw for both of them. One night, when their shift ends and they’ve picked up their last paychecks, Joe and Mary just pack up their things and neither one of them tells anyone else that they’re going away for good. It’s a quick getaway, because what do they have? Some clothes, a few pictures, Mary’s cat – between the two of them, everything important fits in two suitcases and a couple cardboard boxes. Neither of them has seen the Pacific Ocean and Mary still wants to go to Kansas, even if Joe’s convinced the whole state is nothing but cornfields. They point the car west toward California and don’t stop until they run out of road to drive on. (They keep the baby: it’s a girl. They call her “Maggie.”)
6.) The people who attacked him find him again and finish the job they started. They slice up the other side of his face and beat him pretty badly; someone stabs him in the gut and Joe crumples into a corner of the back alley they’d pulled him into. He bleeds out in the dark, he dies alone. When detectives come sniffing around the club to get a positive ID on him, Liz goes with Mary to the morgue; Mary throws up in a wastebasket when the attendant pulls back the sheet and cries for three straight days. She’s never the same after, and when she quits the club a few months later she leaves Chicago and doesn’t look back at all.
7.) For as dishonest as everyone in the club seems to be with one another, these two don’t have that hanging over their heads. They have their own problems, sure, and there are still things they don’t tell the other – Joe with all the dark stuff that happened in the past, Mary with her insecurities and feelings about Liz – but overall they’re honest with each other, and the affection is definitely genuine. There’s a reason these two have the best chance of getting out, is what I’m saying. :P
8.) I love these two, but I can’t realistically see them getting the happy ending I want them to have and it makes it hard, sometimes. Their relationship is built up so much around that knight/damsel dynamic I can’t see them lasting without the framework of the club keeping it up. Would they try? Yes, but it would take a lot of effort for them to make it in the long run.
Paw/Donna/Benzaie
Date: 2011-09-16 03:19 pm (UTC)2.) Donna. Both the boys like to play with it when she wears it down, because it’s curly enough that if you were to pull on a lock of it, it’d spring right back into place when you let it go.
3.) She avoids bringing up Suede around him because it puts everyone on edge, but Benzaie and Donna usually argue over little things: his smoking, her spending, what Paw made for dinner. Donna and Paw’s fights are slightly bigger: he thinks she needs to think more about the future, she thinks he’s too caught up in his head-world to pay attention to the here and now. Paw and Benzaie generally get on with each other alright, but the main thing they argue about what he’s going to tell Donna when Suede comes back; Paw’s seen the letters and the e-mails, he’s heard the late-night phone calls. He can tell the end is coming soon and thinks it’s selfish of Benzaie to keep Donna in the dark, even though Benzaie knows that none of this will end well.
4.) Probably Paw. Benzaie would be torn up for a long while, and Donna would break down if she lost either of them – it’d be worse with Benzaie, but losing Paw would definitely send her on a downward spiral – but Paw’s the most level-headed of the three of them and he’d figure out a way to carry on.
5.) Paw and Donna work out their issues and decide to try and stay together, but when Roses comes back into the picture, things start to get complicated. Eventually they work out another arrangement like they did when Benzaie was still around, except this time it’s Donna who’s the third wheel. Benzaie goes off to be with Suede – it’s inevitable, really – but he leaves Donna on good terms and they still talk on a fairly regular basis. She’s saving up so that she can visit him in France one day soon.
6.) Paw and Donna break up first, and it goes badly – Paw accuses her of stringing him along, and Donna shoots back with enough vitriol in her words that there’s no way they can ever patch things up. Benzaie still goes off with Suede and Donna falls apart, not just because he left, but because in a fit of anger at her behavior he tells her that she never meant anything to him: she was only a “distraction,” he never loved her, never. It absolutely destroys her.
7.) Their personalities tend to clash sometimes, and it can be hard, going back and forth between three very different people, but it’s challenging, and I like that about them. I also like getting to blend the happier parts of their relationship with the underlying resentment and the fact that their time together is quickly running out. Because I like breaking all the shiny, pretty things. ;)
8.) I like writing them, but I…I don’t like them all that much. Is that wrong to say? I mean, each of them definitely have their good points – Paw genuinely cares about the people he’s close to, Benzaie’s a charming sweetheart when he wants to be, Donna’s got an actual heart underneath all the silly vanity on the surface – but none of them are actually very good people. They’re petty and selfish and mean; none of them are honest with each other or say what they’re really feeling, and it’s all superficial and despite the fact that there’s some level of affection there, they’re all just using each other and it’s hard to look past that, sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 02:07 am (UTC)