Commentary Meme

[out_there]

In celebration of finally getting all my stories¹ up on AO3, a writing meme last seen on resonant's DW:

Pick a paragraph (or any passage between ... let's say 200 and 600 words) from anything I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the characters' heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.



¹ - That is a slight lie as the anime stuff I wrote at the not-so-mature ages of 16 and 17 isn't up there, but that's not getting posted online. They died a quiet death with Geocities and none will mourn their passing. But everything fannish written from 20y.o. onwards, is all sitting on AO3. It's a yay, peoples.

Comments

[out_there]

---Mozzie has no loyalty to the Suit. The Suit is the government. He stands for law, social control and all the things that Mozzie fundamentally opposes. Unlike Neal, he's not delusional enough to think that any of that changes just because Agent Burke breaks the rules occasionally.

I love the first line of this story, the way it clearly sets up both the POV (Mozzie's) and his attitudes and personality. It's a bit snarky, a bit disbeiving and cynical, and eccentrically stylish as Mozzie himself is. I love the next two lines too, but the number of times I tried to reword that last sentence doesn't bear mentioning. It's still a bit wordy, but it can be hard to get the complicated lines that Mozzie would say in canon to sound right when written in words. It was something I noticed a bit in this story.

---So he's not here because of the Suit. He's here because he likes El. She's smart, she's stylish, she gets his jokes and she got him an invite to the opening night party of La Boheme. Her only obvious flaw is her choice of husband but Mozzie's willing to ignore that right now.

I heart El. Okay, honestly, I heart Mozzie and Peter too, and even Neal has his appeals. Strangely enough, of the four of them, Neal's probably the one I'm least personally smitten with (although Mr Bomer is incredibly attractive -- and I'm still very fond of Neal, just wouldn't personally want to date him, whereas I'd happily marry El or Peter, and would love to spend hours chatting to Mozzie) but it's a fantastic thing when you can love all of a show's main characters.

This story was written after I'd finished watched s1 because I wanted more Mozzie. I wanted to see Mozzie interact with Peter and El. By the time I'd finished it, it was s2 and I had to go back to edit in some of the Mozzie-specific bits of canon (use more quotes, specifically Einstein, although I'd like to point out that I already had the idea of him having multiple safe houses across the city).

In so many ways, this story is a love letter to Mozzie and to El (a little to Peter, via Neal and El, but it's Mozzie's POV so Peter will always be the distrusted Suit, no matter what). I love the idea of Mozzie being able to recognise that El is smart and sophisticated, funny and gorgeous, confident and so damn awesome. She totally is.

---He scopes out the building one more time and then -- once he's sure the delivery van across the street is nothing but a delivery van -- he rings the bell.

---El opens the door with a smile. "Did you get lost?"

---"No," Mozzie says, peering over her shoulder to make sure the room behind her is empty. He was sure before he walked up the front steps, but it never hurts to double, triple and quadruple check.

Mozzie is the type of character who never looks, he always peers with suspicion. He's over-dramatic and highly suspicious and it's incredibly fun to write him.

---She steps back, waving him in with five perfectly French manicured fingers. "You walked past our place three times."

Right from the start, you notice there's a lot of physical descriptions of El. But a lot of her conversation scenes with Peter show her communicating with body language as much as with words. It's in a tilt of her head, or a wave of her hand. I don't know if she has french manicures in canon, but I think it's the type of understated, feminine and mature elegance that El likes. So much of El is classy -- the way she dresses, the way she holds herself -- and a lot of that comes down to this feminine, refined and well-maintained style. Nothing overt, nothing trashy, nothing screaming for attention because El knows she doesn't need to cause a scene to be listened to.

As you can tell, I really do love El.

---"I was making sure it wasn't being watched."

---"You don't think walking the same street three times would look a little suspicious?"

And I especially love her cheeky sense of humour.

---Mozzie shrugs. "Suspicion's hard to prove." He doesn't explain that he needed to be obvious. If Neal had been here, he would have sent some signal, would have found a way to get outside and try to spot whatever Mozzie was looking for. Neal wouldn't have been able to resist his curiosity. It's one of those things that make Neal who he is.

And this is it, the big reveal of the scene: that Mozzie's here behind Neal's back. But the reader knows it isn't for a devious, terrible purpose. The lines about who Neal is, his curiousity, the clear fondness for his best friend, it's all little signals that this isn't a big betrayal -- it's behind Neal's back but it's being done out of love.

---El watches him closely, like she knows there's more to his incompetent recon act, and then she closes the door. "You said we needed to talk."

I love the phrase "incompetent recon act". I love that Mozzie is deadly serious about keeping his privacy and safety, but at the same time, he's having an incredible amount of fun playing all these spy games.

And El is observant. She's smart enough to know when something's up.

[harpijka]

Thank you!
I LOVE your first line of this story - nice to know you like it too and how you interpret it; I always appreciate brilliant, concise beginnings: they usually mean the whole story is well written.
And I do like Mozzie and Elizabeth, and Peter more than Neal: maybe because we, as viewers, are so obviously supposed to like charming con men...