meme thing 2.0
29/11/12 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchI should be asleep, etc etc, but I've been working on Yuletide fic and homework and the weekend is coming up and I need something to keep me moving and not get stuck. So! Meme.
This is from LJ and then tumblr and I have no idea where it originated, sorry.
Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)
1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School / College AU
Anything I write will be solidly not!fic, probably, but feel free to give me whatever fandom. You can see the ones I've written on AO3, and I am also happy to write Skyfall Bond and any other fandoms you think I might know.
This is from LJ and then tumblr and I have no idea where it originated, sorry.
Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)
1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School / College AU
Anything I write will be solidly not!fic, probably, but feel free to give me whatever fandom. You can see the ones I've written on AO3, and I am also happy to write Skyfall Bond and any other fandoms you think I might know.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-30 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 05:32 am (UTC)So your awesome Chevalier there is a bit late-period for me, as I'm totally doing this Elizabethan style. I even hauled out my timeline spreadsheet of spies etc from my last failed historical novel, which is why I have casting for you!
M is obvs Robert Cecil, and Q can be Anthony Bacon. 007 is James Tipping and Moneypenny is Michael Moody. Let's have Silva as a Spanish national who was working for Walsingham but had been with M-as-Cecil all along, but then M ditched him as she rose to the Council and Silva got back to Spain (he's totally Edward Talbot, tho, some kind of Spanish Edward Talbot, plus lots of christopher Marlowe). Who am I forgetting? Tanner can be Thomas Heneage, there.
You don't have to actually read the wiki pages, though I realize a lot of these names are probably just noise at this point, just hang with me and I'll try to explain.
So Francis Walsingham basically began the English Crown's secret service in 1582 - before, spying was run on a private basis by each lord with enough money and contacts, but Walsingham built up his own spy network and then gave it all to the Queen through his position as Secretary. Unfortunately for him/every spymaster for the Crown immediately following, he succeeded in creating a national secret service for England but did not manage to get the queen to pay for it. This is why spymasters kept going broke.
Elizabethan spying was mostly an exercise in trying to figure out who was going to stage a revolt, which countries were going to go to war with whom, and finding Catholics and encouraging them to get into trouble. (Catholic entrapment continues for quite a while in British history - the Babbington plot under Walsingham is a good example although the wiki page doesn't necessarily spin it that way, and there's evidence that Guy Fawkes and co were also instigated into action by agents of the Crown.) So most spy work would be long periods of ingratiating yourself with dissenters of one kind or another, foreign nationals, etc. Not so many high-speed chases or death defying stunts, a lot more agent provocateuring.
But most of the spies were still beating each other up all the time, so James Bond fits right in!
Anyway, Walsingham did his thing for a while, and then he died, and Robert Cecil came in as spymaster for his dad William Burghley and the Queen. Cecil got his start by reporting on the machinations of Catholics, natch, specifically the plots to make Lord Strange, shit, wrong link, Lord Strange a Catholic king. Strange was perpetually being linked to Catholic plots as Elizabeth's almost presumptive heir, and in this case he didn't get in MUCH trouble for it, but he didn't win any friends either. (He probably also didn't have anything to do with the plot.) But Cecil came out of it as Walsingham's successor and with a seat on the Queen's Council, and everything going great! Let's call the mashup character Maeve Cecil, and she looks like this and wears a large signet ring with a stylized M on it, agh, I need to take a second, Judi Dench in costume is a little too much-
Ok, back. ANYWAY, M is in on the front seats of government, and all is well, the year is 1591 but don't pay attention to that because I am going to fuck this timeline up and not care. (Too much, anyway.)
Unfortunately for Silva, M's rise to power coincides with him getting arrested in the Netherlands for coining (incidents stolen from Kit Marlowe's life #323), and he and M have been besties for a long time, but it's hard to get an agent out of prison when there's a bunch of countries in between you and him, and Silva's also connected with Strange which is probably not good (incidents stolen from Kit Marlowe's life #324), and M has been facing a lot of questions about why her favorite agent is a Spaniard after that whole Armada thing and she
just
leaves him.
It'll be fine, right? The Dutch are such nice people, they wouldn't pull out any teeth or anything while trying to pump this Spanish/English spy for information, right? They just have windmills and shit, and maybe wooden shoes?
Well, yeah. But they also just had a revolution against their Spanish overlords. And they have a grudge. And they have pliers.
Silva is a little bitter. Dentures in the late 16th century weren't as good as they are now.
Meanwhile, M is building up her organization - she figures out that she can hand off a lot of organization and middle management to Q, AKA Anthony Bacon who is my faaaavorite. Anthony Bacon! Actually Robert Devereux's spymaster, but I can do what I want!
Like, just, sidebar on Anthony Bacon, the man was awesome and also totally gay (his biographer, the novelist Daphne du Maurier, settles on 'virgin and probably asexual but it's the 1970s and I don't know what that is yet,' but she has to explain away a lot of gayness to get there). Bacon spent his days going steadily broke from spymastering and avoiding the Queen like hell - every time Elizabeth granted him an audience he would get spontaneously deathly ill and be confined to his bed, I don't think she ever managed to see him. He walked with a cane and had gout and worked very hard at being despondent at all times and he's my faaavorite, and, uh, he's Q because if I can shoehorn Anthony Bacon into something by god I will shoehorn him into something, and he looks like this, I mean, uh, just imagine yourself some actual Elizabethan Whishaw, sorry. Bacon was more of a cryptography and intelligence clearing house guy, but Q can still have the gadgets, the renaissance was full of gadgets, I mean look at this pistol, that thing looks gorgeous and deadly and it would have been fifty years old by the time Q got on the scene so I'm sure he's already developed a machine gun version that spits greek fire.
ANYWAY, god, sorry, this is what you brought upon yourself, ANYWAY, M has her position and she has her Q and now all she needs are thugs and this is what she gets out of James Tipping and Michael Moody, AKA James Bond and Eve Moneypenny.
So these are guys I don't have convenient wiki links for, because they're fairly low in the priorities of history. They were both spies and instigators and involved in a lot of this Catholic plotting stuff. Tipping meets Moody in the Tower, so they're basically prison buddies. I think it goes like this - Bond is in the Tower first, for general bludgeoning etc, because he is a Scotsman in London and London was hella prejudiced then so Bond caved some skulls in the first time he got mocked. He's just gotten settled in, carved some graffiti on the walls, when Moneypenny gets tossed in the Tower too. She's informing on the other prisoners from day 1 (as was her historical counterpart Moody), and she figures she'll get out soon enough except then Bond finds out she's been ratting. She figures they'll have a huge fight and she'll probably have to stab Bond to death, but all Bond says is 'so, how do I get in on this?' And they become an unstoppable spying and instigating team, and the Tower has three riots and some annoying nobles that the Queen wishes would go away get mysteriously stabbed, and the upshot is that when Bond and Moneypenny get out Tanner is waiting for them with a coach and M is sitting inside of the coach with a smile, a handshake, and a big bag of coins to be exchanged for continued service.
To catch us up - Daniel Craig apparently never did Shakespeare, he's a travesty to the fine British tradition of wearing silly clothing, so let's just pretend he's wearing a jerkin here, because the scruffy beard is just about right for the time period. Naomie Harris has also not done the Shakespeare thing, travesty, I tell you, so here are just some pictures of her fine self and remember, if anyone tries to tell you there weren't black people in Elizabethan London, kick them in the kneecap and run before they get any more ignorance on you. and Tanner is subbing for Thomas Heneage, who was a mid-range spy and nobleman with Walsingham and then Cecil, he was Moody's handler, and luckily enough Rory Kinnear has done tons of Shakespeare so he looks like this.
And FINALLY, all the pieces are set and I can get into the plot.
So Bond and Moneypenny are working on the Yorke-Williams plot together. It's basically another Catholic plot, probably helped along by the secret service, this time with the added bonus of Spanish ties which meant it could be blown up into anti-Spanish propaganda. But the threat to the Crown is still a big deal, and Bond and Moneypenny are funneling information out and trying not to be discovered and, whoops, somebody makes Bond, his disguise as an English-hating Scotsman is not QUITE believable enough despite being mostly the truth.
And the plotters tell Moneypenny to shoot him, since she actually has a firearm handy and is half-way accurate (lots of conspirators had guns at the time, very few had any aim). And Moneypenny looks at Bond, they've taken him out to the banks of the Thames, and it's the dead of night and it's the new moon so it's just black out, totally dark, and the lantern-light glints off of Bond's cheekbones, and Moneypenny can almost hear M's voice in her ear saying 'keep the cover, protect the crown, take the shot,' and her fingers tighten on the trigger and Bond jerks and spins as he falls into the water.
Moneypenny thinks she hit him in the shoulder. She's sure she did. But the gun pulls to the right, sometimes, and the current carried Bond away before she could get a good look.
Moneypenny goes on to turn in everyone who was involved in the Yorke-Williams plot, gets a huge bonus and a pat on the back from M, and she feels like shit the whole time.
Bond floats down the Thames to the far bank of outer London, drags himself out, gets stitched up and then probably goes to the White Hart and gets drunk for three weeks with Robert Poley, because he's a dick.
(Robert Poley is another spy connected with basically all of these guys, let's say he's Felix Leiter, whatever.)
Anyway, it turns out that there's not a Spanish connection to the Yorke-Williams plot for nothing, Silva is TOTALLY back and totally blows up Q's house while Q is out.
Why not M's house, you ask? Because everything bad in the world of Elizabethan spies happened to the middle-managing spy master, and Q puts down his cane and gingerly falls to his knees and thinks about how he is going totally broke because he does not live in an era where the Crown actually has a secret service budget and everything is coming out of his pocket and NOW HE HAS TO BUY A NEW HOUSE.
Also all of his codebooks and tools and shit were in there.
So Bond hears about the explosion and comes to check on M ad everybody and Moneypenny is like 'you bastard, you're alive?' and Bond is like 'I've been in the pub literally the whole time, you could have just crossed the bridge and joined my bender,' and Moneypenny thinks about shooting him again.
We can skip the whole psychological test thing and the fitness test because the spy system isn't that codified yet and they don't know what a psychology is, anyway, and let's also skip the Severine thing because it made me uncomfortable in the movie. But let's keep Bond's first meeting with Q because it would be GREAT, Q's young and kind of sickly, with his delicate wood-and-filigree cane, and Bond is older and buff and disdainful, and he's thinking 'I could totally take my spymaster in a fight' and being generally obnoxious and finally Q just says 'my cane shoots poison darts, by the way, isn't it lovely, I could arrange for a personal demonstration.'
And Bond is like, um, no, sorry, maybe I should go track down the guy who blew up your house for you, except he says it in a more manly way, and Q glares at him short-sightedly (glasses have been invented, but Q doesn't wear his often because they give him headaches as no one knows what astigmatism is yet), and Moneypenny watches them and laughs and laughs.
I'm kind of stalling out here, but the rest is basically the show-down between Silva and M and Bond. And Silva and Bond probably make out at some point, because it turns out the only way you can make Silva more sexually assertive and into dudes is by combining him with Kit Marlowe and Edward Talbot. By the way, Javier Bardem has not done Shakespeare, I guess he gets a pass for being Spanish, but he does smoke cigars while not wearing a real shirt, so.
Anyway, M doesn't die at Skyfall, because who's going to ride all the way to Scotland when she can face down Silva in the streets of her London, and I'm going to say that Bond is way more conflicted about getting involved now that he's gotten up close and personal with Silva's tongue, so he stands back as Silva and M duel in the streets.
I know this started out self-indulgent and now it's just getting WORSE, but come on, can't you see it, Silva and M with dueling rapiers and the citizens of London scattering around them, I have an old dueling book that talks about using your cloak as a shield in your off-hand and M rips her overskirt and uses that instead, whipping it at Silva as she tries to cut his head off, and Silva kicks over an applecart and the apples roll across the street and people are tripping and Silva is laughing and M parried his lunge but he has a dagger in his other hand, aimed right at M's eye-
and this is when Moneypenny shoots him in the back, the gun pulled to the right a little so she meant to hit him in the shoulder but she got him in the spine instead. She doesn't feel very regretful as he crumples.
And now the street is full of terrified people and broken carts and a dead body, and Q hobbles up and thinks 'oh god, I hope I don't have to pay for any of this.'
And I think Eve and M probably go somewhere private and make out, because why not, let's go there, life-affirming make outs are appropriate for all eras and ages.
(Bond teaches Q the ways of the post-mission bender, but Q gets ill and does not appreciate it.)
The end! I hope you, uh, actually wanted any of this.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-06 05:38 pm (UTC)For some reason I keep thinking that Robert Cecil may have written poetry (then again, lots of nobles did), or maybe I'm thinking of another Cecil. Hm...
I think this is my favorite part: It'll be fine, right? The Dutch are such nice people, they wouldn't pull out any teeth or anything while trying to pump this Spanish/English spy for information, right? They just have windmills and shit, and maybe wooden shoes? Well, yeah. But they also just had a revolution against their Spanish overlords. And they have a grudge. And they have pliers.
And I love how Q just keeps having ALL THE BAD THINGS happen to him for like no good reason other than he's in the middle of the spy network. XD
Actually, THIS is probably my favorite part because it's PERFECT: Bond is in the Tower first, for general bludgeoning etc, because he is a Scotsman in London and London was hella prejudiced then so Bond caved some skulls in the first time he got mocked.
can't you see it, Silva and M with dueling rapiers and the citizens of London scattering around them, I have an old dueling book that talks about using your cloak as a shield in your off-hand and M rips her overskirt and uses that instead, whipping it at Silva as she tries to cut his head off, and Silva kicks over an applecart and the apples roll across the street and people are tripping...
YES. YES, I CAN TOTALLY SEE IT!!
This entire thing is just perfection, I love it! :D :D
no subject
Date: 2012-12-07 03:07 am (UTC)I don't believe Robert Cecil did poetry, although the Cecil/Burghley family did a lot of patronage stuff. Cecil and his immediate family were all diehard politicians that don't seem to have made much time for anything else.